


A Practical Acquaintance With Bees

by tielan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, BAMF Maria Hill, Drama, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Intrigue, Medical Handwave Of Doom, Medical Inaccuracies, Missions, Spies & Secret Agents, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-20 13:39:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 52,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6008413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The price of being the best is to always be the best, and sooner or later, the universe catches up. Maria Hill learns this the only way she knows how: one day at a time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Three years ago, I wrote '[Give A Girl A Moment And She'll Take You For All You've Got](http://archiveofourown.org/works/455288)' and to this day, it remains one of my most popular MCU stories. The 'hook' in that story had an epic tale of its own, which I tried to write in '[The Right Hand Knows Not](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1166893)', only to stick when Captain America 2 screened and the world flipped upside down.
> 
> Sadly, I can't guarantee that this won't get stuck on Captain America 3, but since the gig is heading considerably off-road in Part 2 of this story, I'm hoping that the muse won't get thrown off-course too much.
> 
> Part 1 is complete at ~50K, and will be posted in five chunks over the next two weeks. The notes for Part 2 are laid out and writing will probably commence this week, and we'll see where it goes from there! Your patience is very much appreciated.
> 
> Thanks so much to my betas for slogging through this - Laimelde, theladyscribe, and mari1212, you have done an awesome job and if I have forgotten to make one of your edits, that's totally on me.

**PART ONE**

_They hadn’t turned up the lights in the main bar, so most of the illumination was coming from the backlit panel behind the bar. Five armed shadows held weapons on the kneeling hostages, their outlines dark against the coloured lights._

_Shouts and shots. A stinging pain in her throat. Dead? No, just dizzy. She stumbled—_

What do they _want_?

_Nausea swamped her, the room wavering before her eyes. Tranquiliser. They wanted Doc Foster alive—_

_A steel coffin in the back of an ambulance, leather straps inside and out, chilling Maria to the bone—_

_Her breath steamed before her eyes, rising up to the night-spangled sky— Wait—_

_She stumbled, putting out her hands to steady herself. Icy rock bit into her palms, black and gritty, ashes and dust in her throat in her lungs, spreading through her body like cold fire—_

_No, she wasn’t here. She was in the bar in New York, on a girl’s night out with Natasha, Pepper Potts, Dr. Foster, and Darcy Lewis. She’d been shot with a tranq but she hadn’t gone down— She was in a safehouse in Vilnius— She was trying to wake up— She was not here—_

_Galaxies spun slowly overhead across a velvet dome, a great spatter of stars smeared across a canvas of midnight blue. It was empty out there – a great black vacuum of space and energy and time that dragged at her senses, and yet…_

Breathe deep and think past the pain. You’re stronger than this—

_The sense of people hung in the air – a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million. An endless crowd, uncountable, unseen, like the hum of voices in the next room edged with the knife-sharp determination of a team before a mission – not just any crowd, but people with a purpose…_

_Waiting— For what?_

_Maria turned, trying to find her way back, trying to find her way out – this was a dream right? You couldn’t die in your dreams—_

_She saw the shadows leap—_

* * *

Maria jerked up in the bed, clawing off the sheets that clung to her sweat-laced skin. She sat for a moment, panting in the early morning darkness and squinting at the blurry light of her phone ringing in the semi-dark.

She frowned at the name on the display – _Steve Rogers_ – humming a little in her throat to get the sleep out of her voice before she answered.

“This is Hill.”

“Commander. Did I wake you?”

 _Yes,_ she thought, but didn’t say. No point in making Rogers feel bad about it. “What’s up?” It took her a second to recall today’s mission for his squad. Her attention sharpened. “The Vilnius facility?”

“Our demolitions team came down with a bad bout of food poisoning last night. We’re out four and only have three replacements. Rumlow said you were in the area and had experience.” There was a pause. “It’s cleared with Fury.”

Maria scowled into the darkness. “You went over my head on this?”

“Yes.” He said it without apology. “We’ve got spares on the roster, but they’re halfway across Europe, or they don’t have the necessary demolitions experience. You’re the nearest one with—”

“You don’t have to sell me the mission, Rogers. I’m in.” She’d seen the mission, reviewed the data, agreed with the conclusions. And if she was the closest, and Rumlow’s squad were willing to work with her… “Give me an hour.”

“You’re on our way, we could do a pickup.”

“Does that give me less time, or more?”

“Fifteen minutes more.”

Not much, but given her state of mind this morning, she’d take it. “Call when you’re incoming at the airfield, then.”

“Regretting the stopover, Hill?”

In spite of herself, a smile found its way to her mouth at his droll query. “Not yet, Rogers. I’ll see you in an hour and fifteen.”

She tossed the phone down and sighed, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes to try to dispel the cold ache behind them. She was tired. Not enough sleep, too many dreams, and the endless scramble of planning, prepping, and preventing that had become world security in the last year.

The Chitauri invasion, then the Mandarin and the Extremis threat, and then the alien ship coming down in London just the other week… The world was reeling from the events of the last couple of years, and S.H.I.E.L.D was at full tilt, trying to keep on top of everything, particularly with Project Insight nearing completion.

Fury thought having Insight live and in the air would give S.H.I.E.L.D a bit of breathing time: the threat of the helicarriers sufficient to stay the hands of anyone or anything with plans of world domination. Maria would have liked to believe it, but her cynical soul only said something new would crop up to change the playing field again. That was the way the game worked, wasn’t it? Meet one threat, and be presented with another.

 _The price of being the best is to always be the best,_ Peggy had said once during one of Maria’s visits. _And you won’t always be the best. After a while, it catches up with you._

It was catching up with Maria faster than she liked.

But she didn’t have time for self-pity.

Maria climbed out of bed, got dressed, and focused on the mission at hand.

* * *

It had been a gulag back in the bad old days of the Soviet Union.

Standard S.H.I.E.L.D intel had placed it as a research facility for the last twenty-five years, with nothing to tip any warning flags – until a first-year analyst at the Communications Academy was assigned a routine project and came up with a less-than routine conclusion.

At another time, her conclusions would have been dismissed and shelved. In the wake of the Avengers defence of New York against the Chitauri, with Project Insight on the books, and S.H.I.E.L.D sitting higher in the regard of the public than ever before, what was an unorthodox conclusion about one small facility?

“A waste of our time and effort, if you ask me,” muttered Lowell as he swayed with the movement of the truck on the road. “Don’t know why Rumlow took this – especially since we’re working with a ring-in. No offence, commander.”

“Stow it, Iain,” Gregson told him, with a brief roll of the eyes for his team-mate’s grumbling. “The brass greenlit it. Not ours to question why, but to do and shut the fuck up.”

In the fourth corner of the covered truck bed, Carreras piped up, “If they’re holding S.H.I.E.L.D agents there...”

“Then the fucking cowboy agents shouldn’t have been stupid enough to get caught!” Lowell glared at Maria, as though it was all her fault they were on this mission.

In Maria’s opinion, it was Coulson’s fault.

The discovery of Akela Amador, alive and using the skills S.H.I.E.L.D had taught her to do the Clairvoyant’s bidding – forced or no – had shaken a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D’s policies around missing agents. It was one thing to go up against personnel from other agencies, but going up against their own people?

Carreras was checking his weapon, and saying something about how they couldn’t all be team players. He glanced over at Maria, all angled face and cheeky eyes. Her memory cast up that he was the newest member of Rogers’ assigned squad, and one of the youngest. Good at what he did, just needed a little polish.

“Don’t mock the ring-in,” she said, knowing what was expected of her. “I’ll be watching your back.”

Lowell was watching her with hard eyes. “A bit below your paygrade, though, isn’t it, Hill?”

She shrugged and quoted one of Coulson’s favourites. “It’s not below grade if it gets the job done.”

The pointed commentary didn’t bother her too much. As Fury had said when she’d called, “ _You’re there, they’re willing, you’re able. I can spare you for another day._ ” And, as a woman high in the ranks of S.H.I.E.L.D, she’d endured worse for considerably less before.

Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D was equal opportunity, but if females made up forty percent of S.H.I.E.L.D’s personnel out in field operations, in the Ops teams the percentages were considerably less and while the misogyny wasn’t quite as bad as, say, the Navy SEALS, it sure as hell wasn’t female-friendly.

But this was a single mission, and if the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D was willing to have her on a mission to replace a missing man then it wasn’t her place to question – no more than it was the place of the men on that mission to question why the last replacement for their four men down was a woman.

So she’d taken the looks without comment, and quelled the comments with a look.

They tensed as, beneath them, the truck changed gears, the engines growl dying as they slowed down to approach the gates of the compound.

“Activating holo device,” said Carreras, and typed a series of numbers into a keypad he’d affixed to the side of the truck. A moment later, a thin glow ran around the rim of the truck bed, before a hologram rose to encase them. From the inside, a silvery glow bathed them in an incongruously white light; but from the outside, the hologram would mimic the boxes the driver had been hired to deliver – basic supplies for the facility, a regular delivery.

The truck stopped at the gate, and Maria strained her ears to hear the conversation taking place between the guards and the driver. Russian, she thought, although she listened less for the language and more for the cadence of the words, the tone.

Gregson was looking over at her, brows lifted in question. Maria shook her head. Everything seemed in place, even if she could only catch one word in three.

There was no tension in the driver’s voice, no suspicion in the guards, just the casual pleasantry of people making small talk on a regular run. The driver of this delivery truck had already been half paid off – if everything went well, then he’d earn double what he’d already received. If he turned on them, or things went badly, then he was a dead man walking.

As the gates swung outwards with the tortured screech of unlubricated metal, Maria checked herself over, reminding herself what was in each pocket – ‘keys, balls, watch, wallet’ as the saying among old men went. It was a habit she’d picked up from her days in the Marines, nothing more, but when she looked up, the other three were staring at her as though she was a strange new creature they’d never seen before.

Irritated, but knowing better than to show it, Maria simply arched her brows. After a moment, they looked away.

No, she wasn’t part of their team, nor did she want to be. Yes, it had been a while since she’d been out in the field like this, and no, even when she’d been a field agent, she hadn’t been on one of the STRIKE Ops teams like this. But she’d been co-opted onto this mission and she would do the job that was necessary.

And, moreover, she would do it _well_.

They rumbled into the delivery bay, the team remaining where they were as the engine switched off. The cabin door closed and the driver’s voice could be heard describing his erstwhile cargo in easy terms.

The back flap of the truck was pulled up and an armed guard peered in.

Maria held her breath and stayed perfectly still.

The holographic device only deceived the eyes, and only so long as nobody disturbed the limits of the field. It didn’t have more than a few minutes’ worth of power, which was why they’d decided to keep its use to an absolute minimum.

If the guard suspected anything, then they’d have to start shooting and things would get messy.

The flap dropped down and guard and driver walked away from the truck, the driver asking if there was anything to drink, the guard telling him he had to get his cargo unloaded before he could have a drink. “ _Work before play, little man,_ ” was the cheerful response.

The door swung closed with a soft creak.

An instant later, Carreras had the device off and Maria was swinging out of the truck and down onto the garage floor, Gregson dropping down behind her a split-second later. As Carreras and Lowell climbed out, Maria did a quick check over the garage – long and large and smelling of old oil, but filled with vehicles far more heavily armoured than would have been expected given the facility’s exterior.

There was definitely something more than a research station here.

Gregson was signalling the team to move out, and Maria quickly laid down what she considered ‘insurance’ towards their getting out. Lowell took the lead with Carreras following close behind him. By prior agreement, Maria was rear-guard. She’d be the lookout while Gregson, Carreras, and Lowell set the charges to take out the facility’s backup generator. Meanwhile, elsewhere, another four-man team were working at frying the facility’s electrical system, causing maximum chaos, and allowing Rogers and Rumlow free rein to take on the most difficult job: getting the prisoners out.

And all of it was taking place under a comms blackout.

No way to signal if anything went wrong. No way to tell if everything was going according to plan. There was only trust in each other and in the execution of the mission.

Maria didn’t particularly like it, but it wasn’t her mission.

It _was_ her job to keep an eye out for any signs that they – or the others – had been made. So far, there was nothing she could see or hear that seemed out of the ordinary.

So why did she have the nagging sense that something wasn’t quite right?

They moved out through a door that led out to a small, snow-covered courtyard. In the middle, a leafless oak stretched bare arms to the open sky, like a prisoner waiting for the sun. Maria had a sudden flash of the oak in summer – full of leaf and vigour – and blinked.

There was nothing but the snow and the air that frosted with every breath.

“Casual,” Gregson reminded her as they stepped out of cover. “Like we belong here.”

Maria bit back the reminder that she was familiar with the psychology of infiltration, and tucked her hand and her weapon into her jacket pocket, like a guard who’d just stepped out for a cigarette. A cap on her head disguised her features, and she kept her head down and trudged along, telling herself that the feeling of being a sitting duck was just a feeling, no truth to it – no truth to it at—

She dodged a second before Gregson stumbled and went down, the bullet spattering his brains scarlet across the muddy snow.

The world went sharp and bright and oddly cold as Maria’s battle instincts kicked in.

“Get the door open!” Her voice echoed oddly in the courtyard as she turned on her heel and lifted her weapon to target the shooter on the roofline. Her finger twitched on the trigger, taking him down. Shouts rose around them, and an alarm began to wail. Movement at the edge of her vision had her swinging left. She was shooting before she knew it, saw the curtain jerk and tear down as the shooter behind it went down.

There was a bang, and the air filled with the acrid scent of the lock-pick explosive.

Behind her, she could hear Lowell gabbling into his comms, Carreras yelling something about the door being open.

Maria sprinted for the door, slapping her hand on the doorjamb and swinging herself inside just as a hail of bullets stitched a line along the door. She kicked it shut and walked past Lowell who was trying to raise the rest of the team. “Forget contact,” she said. “They’ve heard the gunfire; they know we’re blown. Our job is to give them the break they need to get our agents out. Carreras?”

To his credit, he picked up faster than Lowell and started for the inner room, pulling out the explosives they’d planned to use on the generator.

“We need a new exit plan,” she told Lowell. “You studied the facility, what’s the best way out of here? Direct or indirect.”

He glared at her for a moment, as though what was happening was her fault. “We have to get out of here first.”

“No. We blow the backup generator as planned, _then_ we get out of here.”

“Are you kidding? The mission’s bunk. They know we’re coming—”

Maria walked past him into the generator room where Carreras was laying out a string of electronic explosives. “How’s it?”

“We’d be doing better if we had Gregson’s explosives,” came the response. He glanced at her, dark eyes cool and steady on her face, looking to her for the lead. “Fire in the hole and hope we make it out, or detonate from a distance?”

She wanted to say ‘detonate from a distance’, because dying in a gulag in Vilnius hadn’t been anywhere in her plans for this mission.

But this wasn’t a rescue mission anymore – it was a salvage one.

Someone here had known they were coming – yet another of Fury’s frustrating leaks – and a trap had been set. To capture a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. Ops guys? A lot of effort for a very small net gain. Which left Maria Hill, Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, or Steve Rogers, Captain America. And Maria was under no illusions: she was small potatoes when measured up against Captain America.

“Fire in the hole,” she told Carreras.

“You’re fucking mad!” Lowell snarled.

“They’re after Rogers, not us. Our responsibility is to keep Captain America out of enemy hands.” She looked at Carreras as she talked. Lowell was a lost cause – if he was going to fight her on one thing, he was going to fight her on everything – but there was grim recognition in Carreras’s eyes as he nodded.

“I trust you don’t mean to get us killed.”

“It’s not on my ‘To Do’ list,” she replied, dryly. “We’ll do what we can to get away, but we can’t hold off and hope for rescue.”

“If we don’t get out of here soon, they’ll have us boxed in,” Lowell growled. “So how about we stop with the sucking up and get to the exit plan?”

Carreras frowned slightly. Maria cut him off before he could start butting heads with Lowell. “We’ve got smokemakers, right? Toss out a few to make a mess upstairs, we scramble, and toss a few more as we go.”

“We’ll be fucking sitting ducks.”

“We’re fucking sitting ducks now,” Carreras retorted. “Better to run for it than wait for them to come for us.”

Lowell scowled as he started pulling out his smokemakers. “It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”

Carreras snorted. “When does anything?”

Maria already had her smokemakers out and was programming them accordingly. ‘Smokemakers’ was S.H.I.E.L.D’s generic term for a whole range of devices designed to give an exiting team coverage – from dirty bombs detonating in a fusillade of shrapnel, to literal smoke-makers which exploded into dust to cloud the air.

Outside the external door, she could hear shouting – people giving orders, and the distant tramp of boots. “Incoming,” she said as she headed for the door, listened for the distant tramp of boots to get closer, and lobbed a shrapnel bomb out the door and up the stairs, into the snow. She followed it up with an actual smokemaker to get them some cover.

A moment later there was a _pop_ as the dirty bomb went off, several _tings_ off various pipes and railings, and the sudden screams of men as sharp bits of metal embedded in unprotected flesh.

“Outgoing,” Carreras added, handing her another dirty bomb. Maria activated it and tossed it up – a little higher this time. More metal _tings_. More screams.

Lowell handed her two smoke makers. “You take the lead. Get us back to the garage complex.”

Carreras frowned. “You studied the plans; you should lead!”

“Never mind,” Maria told Carreras. “Be ready to go.” She listened to the noises outside, picking her time—

 _Now_. She stepped out the door and hurled the first smokemaker high and the second to the top of the stairs. Another dirty bomb followed the first smokemaker, well into the middle of the courtyard, and shrapnel spat across the yard.

Maria fitted a gas filter into her mouth and started up the stairs, through the smoke still pouring through the courtyard. She could hear Carreras coming up the stairs behind her, Lowell a step behind him, but her attention was on the courtyard and the shooters aiming at them. Surely their attention should be drawn by what was happening elsewhere in the facility – the prisoner escape?

Unless the rescue had been cut off as sharply as their distraction attempt had been. And Rogers was with the rescue group—

_Shit shit shit shit shit shit…_

Somewhere in the facility, distant but audible, an alarm began shrilling.

Relief hit her like a slap to the face. _They’re still alive._ She didn’t have time to exult. The click-whine of a charging weapon warned her a split second ahead of time. _Energy stunners_. Which meant—

No time to call a warning as blue fire sliced through the air. She ducked and rolled out of the line of fire, hissing as she hit the icy ground. With her weapon tucked up against her as she rolled, she had it to hand when she rolled to her feet and targeted the shooter. He got one more shot off before he tumbled over the balcony and his weapon thunked to the ground across the courtyard.

Behind her, there was a thump, and a splat. Lowell was down, a bloody, spurting hole in his eye, and Carreras was staggering. Maria hauled on Carreras’s shoulder, half-yanking the still-conscious man through the nearby door into the garage complex. Leg wound, didn’t look like an artery, but he wasn’t going to be running anywhere anytime soon. “Detonator?”

He managed a rasping breath. “Chest pocket.”

Maria fished it out and typed in the detonation code. “Okay,” she tucked the detonation device into her chest pocket. “How bad is it?”

“Hurts a bitch; can walk.”

She didn’t quite manage to stifle the snort in her throat at his optimism. “Let’s take it at a limp to start with.”

They started at a limp, although what Maria really wanted to do was to haul him up over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry and just get the hell out of there. There were more people gunning for them than they’d estimated. Or maybe it just felt that way.

 _Situational paranoia,_ she told herself as Carreras and she limped to the garage. _You just think you’re the centre of attention._

As they reached the door something – movement or sound or _something_ – made her half-turn, look up, _sidestep_.

Carreras became deadweight in her arms as the icer – stun-gun, energy weapon, phaser, whatever name some tech had come up with – shot him in the hip. Maria stumbled through the door, fetching Carreras up against a wall and narrowly missing another icer shot which earthed itself on the doorjamb before she kicked it shut.

They didn’t have long. A couple of bullets through the wood composite and they’d be dead as Gregson and Lowell. But before anything else, they had a mission to complete.

Keeping Carreras wedged between her and the wall, Maria detonated the explosives. The ground shook, but the shouting and the running steps seemed distant as she hauled Carreras up in a fireman’s carry and headed for the garage.

It wasn’t a long haul – nothing to the old days of Boot Camp, jogging with a 20kg pack on her back every morning at the crack of dawn, with some sadistic old bastard bellowing sexist exhortations about ‘making a man out of you’ – but her shoulders and arms and back felt it was plenty long by the time she managed to get Carreras in the backseat of a Hummer.

So far, so good.

Of course, her luck ran out right about the time she was retrieving the keys from the sun visor. The first bullet hit the side back window and she flinched before realising she was hearing yelling and wasn’t dead. _Bulletproof._ What the fuck had they been doing in this facility that their cars were bulletproof?

Still, bulletproof only meant it would stand a couple of shots – let loose on automatic and eventually—

Keys into the ignition, shift gear, pedal down—

Maria had aced the S.H.I.E.L.D driving course back during her Level 2 days. She could do things with four wheels and a handbrake that made the instructors blink. Every now and then, the instructors at the Academy still asked her to take a class or two, which she did with pleasure.

It was all about a steady hand on the wheel, the ability to judge yourself, the vehicle, and the environment, quick thinking under pressure, and practise.

If you were going to play chicken with a garage door, for instance, you had to be reasonably sure that the door would give way when you hit it. Which could be ensured by the careful application of positioned charges at specific points—

The Hummer skidded briefly on the ice outside as Maria swerved trying to avoid the sharp edges of the twisted metal doors. No point in getting halfway out and then running a flat. The crunch of metal indicated she hadn’t been entirely successful, but the vehicle was still handling so she gave it no more thought.

Instead, she gunned the engine for the distant gatehouse.

The guards were little black dots by the gatehouse, staring at the facility and pointing at her Hummer. Only one thought to scatter when she rolled down the passenger window and spun the wheel hard left, giving her a clear view out the passenger window. She’d have preferred to shoot out the front window but if the side windows were bulletproof, then the front probably was, too, and she had no desire to be hit by a ricochet – or muck up her forward view.

Plus, out here, she had space to manoeuvre.

Six shots took care of three of the guards and the fourth sprawled his length in the snowbanks either side of the gatehouse. Since he stayed down, he probably figured his job didn’t come with enough benefits to risk his neck. While he was down, Maria pulled out a heavier gauge and sighted it on the gate hinges.

The explosion blew the gates ajar, and she aimed the Hummer for the opening, picking a point and revving the engines until she smashed through the metal with enough force to have them bounce up and over the Hummer, screeching wildly across the roof as they went.

Out on the road – an open run for far too long: too much of a target, but she didn’t have a choice. Maria stepped on the gas and risked a quick fishtail through the ice and snow of the road before she eased back to regain control.

She risked a glance in the rear-vision mirror to get a look at the compound. A huge pillar of smoke rose up in the air behind them – hopefully enough distraction for the rescue force. She hoped that the rescue force had made it out – there’d been a lot more guards than they’d been led to expect, and even this branch of the mission had cost them two men—

The road had been clear when they started down it – Maria would have sworn it by any oath they cared to make her take. But when she looked back there was a man standing in the middle of the strip of bitumen. No weapons – at least, none that she could see – no sign or stance; he just stood there, playing chicken with a Hummer.

In the backseat, Carreras groaned. Maria accelerated. If he didn’t move, she might have to swerve just a fraction – it would knock him for six, but unless he was the Hulk—

 _Shit_.

She swerved. He sidestepped.

He sidestepped _fast_.

There was a crunch and the crack of glass shattering, Maria had a blurred impression of a dark facemask as he grabbed hold of the front strut of the Hummer and swung himself up on top of the car.

He was on the Hummer’s _roof_.

Maria swerved again and grabbed the heavy-gauge gun, hitting the button for the window release. He was on the roof and she needed to get him off. But the most direct way from her to him was _through_ the roof—

He was _on_ the roof.

A hand plunged through the ceiling of the car, heading straight for the wheel.

Maria saw it as though in slow-motion. The roof of the Hummer flowered down as it was punched through from the top. The metal gauntlet reached for the top curve of the wheel. She had an impression of dark hair and the facial mask—but the gun was in her hand and it was pointing up. She shot without conscious thought. In the hand, in the elbow, in the shoulder— _keep shooting_. A stray ricochet _might_ be death. Her instincts screamed this operative _would_ be.

She yanked the steering hard left and dragged on the handbrake. The Hummer was a beast of a machine and it swung with all the torque she’d hoped for – and some besides. The gauntlet grabbed at the edge of the hole he’d punched through, but she accelerated out of the turn, and then executed another handbrake turn – left again.

Metal screeched across the roof of the Hummer as he slid and failed to find purchase – but there was a hand still gripping the top of the open passenger window with inhuman strength. Black-gloved, but human.

If human, then pain.

Maria shot it.

She thought she hit, although she might have just missed. He let go, either way.

There was a moment when she felt the world spin – a burning sting in her gun hand, the long fall through wintry air and a cry blown away on the wind. A hard landing in snow and a burning agony in her left shoulder—

She blinked, and the operative was gone – a blur of black and silver tumbling through dirty snow and grey ice.

Maria dragged the Hummer back onto the dark strip of the road, going easy on the gas so she wouldn’t fishtail out of control. She headed for the forest, hoping there was nothing more waiting for her. She dared a glance back in the side-vision mirror, and saw him rise from the snow like a dead man come to life, a Terminator pulling itself out of impossible wreckage.

_Watch the goddamn road!_

Her foot had been pushing down on the gas too hard; they were bulleting along a straight line road which was about to become a lot less straight. Maria eased back, even as the engine roared defiance beneath the pounding panic of her heart as it slammed against her ribs.

 _Close, too close, too fucking damn close_.

They plunged into the forest, and the blue-white of the snow mottled to grey-green shadows. Nothing came at them, although Maria kept her eyes out and uselessly scraped at the wisps of hair tossed about her face. The hole in the roof whistled annoyingly, but she couldn’t do anything about it. It would be pretty noticeable when they reached civilisation, and Maria glanced up, wondering if she could at least get some parts of the smashed roof back into place—

Stars twinkled in the midnight sky beyond the hole in the roof, and Maria’s breath caught— _what the hell—no, God, no, not now_ —

She dragged her gaze back to the road, focusing on the grey and white mountains, trying not to see the canyons of shadow and rock that threatened to overlay it.

_Stay here. Stick with it. Don’t vague out now._

Black rocks and blue sky, her breath frosting before her eyes. Desperately she reached for something to anchor her.

_You’ve got a man down and he needs medical help. So stay focused._

Maria breathed carefully, ignoring the cold that invaded the Hummer.

_Stay with it. Don’t lose it._

She fixed her eyes on the road, on the drive and shoved her dreams away.

Then jerked upright.

Something was tapping on the driver’s side window.

“Commander?”

Maria blinked. She was sitting in the Hummer, in the courtyard of the assigned S.H.I.E.L.D safehouse. Out the front windscreen, a cattle truck was sitting in the yard, unloading men and women. Out the driver’s side window, Rogers was looking in at her, his eyes intent on her face.

“Commander, are you okay?”

Maria looked from him to the safehouse to the dashboard display. Two hours missing, presumed gone. And she had no idea what had happened.

* * *

Officially, the rescue mission was a success. They retrieved eight agents alive, no kill-switches, no Clairvoyant, and while two men had gotten injured on the way out, the entire retrieval team had made it back.

Maria kept a stony face as she explained what had happened to Gregson and Lowell, as she accepted Rumlow’s grim nod at the news that two of his men had gone down in the assault on the secondary generator, and ignored Jack Rollins’ growl questioning how she’d gotten out unscathed. She reported on the excess guard presence, and the extensive pursuit by the gauntleted operative without showing any hint of her exhaustion or her disquiet, and said nothing of the fugue state she’d fought all the way to the safehouse.

And if she wanted nothing more than to collapse in an exhausted heap, she figured she could wait until she was back in the apartment in Vilnius.

Of course, first she had to get there.

She got into the showers and scrubbed herself down. Got changed and scraped her things into a duffle, then sank on to the edge of the bed in the quarters she’d taken for clean-up.

So tempting to just lie back and take ten. Except that ten would become twenty, and twenty would become an hour, and Maria didn’t want to spend the night in a safehouse. She really didn’t want to spend the night in a safehouse with a squad of guys who were still resentful that she’d come back from a mission without a scratch, while two of theirs were dead, and the third was in recovery.

Just because they were S.H.I.E.L.D didn’t mean they weren’t human.

Hauling herself to her feet, she headed for the kitchen, thinking that she’d get a coffee before co-opting one of the vehicles to get herself back to Vilnius.

There was music coming from one of the downstairs rooms, a steady pumping beat that told her where Rogers and his squadron had retreated. If she recalled correctly, this safehouse boasted a well-stocked bar, an excellent sound system, and some very comfortable lounges. All well and good to keep them occupied while she packed up and shipped out.

Except that when she reached the kitchen, she found that not everyone had gone downstairs.

Rogers looked up from the stove. “Hill.”

“Rogers.” She blinked when she realised what he was doing. “Is that…coffee?”

“Turkish, I think it’s called these days.” He shrugged as the little double-pot began to emit steam. “I just think of it as European-style coffee.”

“Got any spare?”

He studied her for a moment. “Are you going to have anything other than the coffee before you head off?”

“ _Is_ there anything else to have other than the coffee?”

“Well, the kitchen seems pretty well stocked. Not just MREs, either.”

She hated MREs. “I can’t cook.”

“I can.”

About to point out how that didn’t help _her_ , it took Maria a moment to recognise the invitation inside the statement. She _was_ tired. And Rogers was watching her. She pulled herself together. “If you’re offering to cook, Rogers – and share that coffee – then I accept. As long as it’s not a three-course meal.”

“I don’t think I know how to do a three course meal,” he admitted as he took the coffee pot off the stove and poured its contents into a mug. The thick, heavy scent filled the kitchen like life breathed into the dead or dying. “Black?”

“You haven’t left yourself any.”

“I’ll make another one. You need this more.”

He was being kind; she could see it in his eyes. But Maria weighed up being pitied against being caffeinated, and took the mug. “Thanks.”

She sipped the coffee as he rinsed out the pot and spooned more grounds in. It was good coffee, with actual flavour – not the usual sludge that turned up in S.H.I.E.L.D safehouses. “Do you carry a stash of beans with you?”

“Sometimes.” Rogers grinned over his shoulder. “But, no, this is from the pantry. I guess they’re a little more picky about their coffee here in Eastern Europe.”

“They’re a bit more picky about their coffee just about anywhere in the world outside of the States,” Maria observed, her hands wrapped around the mug. Nice and hot and stimulating – exactly what she needed at this moment.

“You’d have travelled a lot with S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Yes.”

“And in your time with the Marines?”

“You’ve been doing your research.” Maria was a little surprised he’d gone that far back. Most people only went back through her S.H.I.E.L.D record. She watched him go over to the pantry, moving through the kitchen space like he was familiar with it – or, at least comfortable in the kitchen. While they’d interacted a little in the wake of the Battle of New York, it was well-known that – unlike Coulson – she wasn’t a fan of the Avengers Initiative. That tended to inhibit things more than a little.

“I like knowing who I’m working with. What they’ve done. Is an omelette okay?”

Maria shrugged, not really caring. “You’re the cook.”

Rogers’ smile was faint. “Omelette, then.” He pulled out eggs and a bowl, hunted through cupboards for a chopping board, and dug through the fridge for milk and things to add. By the time he’d laid them all out on the benchtop, his coffee was chugging away. He checked it, turned off the stove, poured it out into an identical mug to the one Maria held, then tapped it against hers before drinking in a toast. “You got Carreras out.”

“But not Gregson or Lowell.” It was hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“No. But you were under a lot of fire.” Blue eyes held hers, entirely too perceptive for Maria’s liking. “Getting Carreras and yourself out isn’t a small thing, Hill. Rumlow and the others are just angry because they’ve lost friends.”

“But you haven’t?”

Rogers’ mouth twisted a little, and he started breaking eggs into the bowl. Maria sipped her coffee and waited to see if he’d answer.

“When agents go down in the line of duty, do you consider yourself to have lost friends?”

“Depends on the agent.” Then she blinked, seeing his point.

“Gregson and Lowell were good soldiers– good men. I’m sorry to have lost them. But I don’t have the history with them that the others do – Rollins and Lowell were in Delta Force together before switching over to S.H.I.E.L.D, and they’ve been working with Rumlow ever since. I think Rumlow is godfather to Gregson’s son, and so on.”

“Family.”

He blinked, as though surprised by the idea, then nodded. “That’s a good word for it. They’re family. And I’m not quite a part of that yet.”

Maria bit back the observation that she couldn’t see why not. It seemed…well, not impossible, clearly, but at least unlikely that any group wouldn’t want Captain America to be one of them.

Maybe that was the problem?

The man beating eggs in a bowl on the other side of the long wooden bench that ran down the middle of the kitchen wasn’t ‘Captain America’ – just Steve Rogers. And while Captain America was a hero, a leader, and somewhat larger than life, Steve Rogers had offered a tired and weary operative coffee, reassurance, and was now making her dinner.

“Is that how you saw the Howling Commandos? As family?”

For a moment she wasn’t sure he would answer. But she didn’t modify it, or tell him he didn’t have to answer. If he wanted to, he would; if he didn’t, he’d deflect.

“It was a different time,” he said after a moment, not looking up. “A different mindset and ethic – the war forged bonds that couldn’t just be left behind when we went home at the end of the day.”

“Because you never went home.” Maria saw the shape of it now. “Enforced bonding.”

He took a moment to answer. “I wouldn’t say ‘enforced’. Just...unavoidable.”

“That says ‘enforced’ to me.” But Maria let it go, watching in fascination as he peeled and chopped an onion with fluid swiftness, and tossed it into the cast iron pan which had been heating on the stove.

When he caught her watching, he smiled, his eyes bright and tearless. “Sometimes being a little faster comes in useful.”

“Only sometimes?”

“Well, I guess some things you wouldn’t want to rush.” He indicated her mug. “A good coffee, for instance.”

Maria found herself smiling and lifted her cup at him. “ _Touché_.”

His mouth curved at one corner and he turned away to do something with oil and the pan and the onions. Whatever it was sizzled and smoked, and an automatic fan turned on overhead. “Do you like your onions crispy or soft?”

“Whatever. You choose.”

“Soft, then” he said, and turned the heat down as she swirls the last of the coffee in the bottom of her mug.

Maria watched him slice vegetables into strips before neatly cross-cutting them into small cubes. She grinned as he popped a cherry tomato whole into his mouth, and copied him when he tossed another her way. And as she bit into the small sweet globe, she reflected that it wasn’t her usual way of winding down after a mission but it wasn’t half bad.

Enough time to breathe and relax – and eat – before she had to drive back to the apartment.

And she owed it to Captain America. Well, to Steve Rogers, anyway.

So, when he set the plate in front of her, depositing utensils, salt and pepper by her hand, Maria made sure to meet his gaze. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Maria.”

He set the second plate down opposite her, and hooked one foot around the stool to pull it in. As he settled himself, a door opened downstairs, releasing a wave of chatter and laughter and music. And it occurred to Maria that if any of the crew downstairs came up, they’d find Commander Hill and Captain America having a very cosy dinner and coffee together.

Rogers arched a brow at her when she was halfway through her omelette – he was only on his third or fourth bite. “Is there a fire somewhere?”

Maria had too much training to wince at being caught – at least on the outside. “Just wanting to get back to my apartment.”

“Ah.” He sliced off a piece of omelette. “I thought you might be wanting to get away from me.”

“Not at all,” she lied. “I appreciate the dinner.”

He ate his mouthful thoughtfully, still watching her. And under that gaze, Maria slowed down her eating pace. A little. She still finished ahead of him, and gathered up her plate and utensils and mug for putting in the dishwasher. Under other circumstances, she’d have offered to wash up since he’d cooked. Those circumstances did not include possibly being found up to her elbows in dishwater by any STRIKE team operative.

There were limits, and Maria was way past them.

“Thanks for the coffee and the dinner,” she told him as she came back to the table to collect her satchel and keys, ready for the drive back. “I appreciate it.”

“Do you?”

She met his gaze, unstinting. “Of course.”

“Of course,” he murmured as she turned towards the door. “Maria.”

The sensation of being called on the carpet was unpleasant, filled with the memories of her father’s temper and the discipline of the Marines. Maria stifled the instinctive snap, but couldn’t quite help the bite. “Yes, _Steve_?”

He seemed to think the better of what he was going to say. For a split-second. Then he plunged ahead anyway. “You looked pretty stunned when you drove in here after the mission. Like you’d just woken up.”

Maria took a second to marshal her thoughts. “It was...stressful, losing two men in the mission, being chased by the solo operative.”

“So stressful I had to knock twice on the window before you responded.” He held her gaze and didn’t back down. “What happened?”

“I was tired.”

There was a moment when she thought he’d accept her excuse. Then he shook his head. “No. _Now_ , you’re tired. Then, you were...in some kind of a fugue state. Shell-shocked.”

It was like a game of chicken; Maria thought. The first one to flinch – but she was too tired for this shit. And it was surprisingly hard to lie to Steve Rogers. “You didn’t bring this up before.”

“I wanted to see if you would.”

“And now?”

“Will you tell someone about it?” When she frowned, he added, “Someone in S.H.I.E.L.D. with medical clearance.”

“Do I get a choice about it?”

“Yes.” At her disbelieving huff, he shrugged slightly. “You can tell someone, or I can tell someone.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a pushy bastard?”

Steve smiled, then. “I believe you did, six months ago after the terrorists cornered you in that bar in New York. I’m just looking out for my team.”

“Newsflash, Rogers – I’m not your team.” He didn’t look away, and she wanted to swear. “So you’ll tattle on me to Fury?”

“If necessary. I look after my people.” When she opened her mouth, he held up one hand. “I know, you don’t think of yourself as one of mine. But you were today, and that counts.”

Maria exhaled, blowing out a long breath. “All right. I’ll tell someone. Someone medical,” she added when he arched a brow. “Shall I get them to send you the workup?”

“That won’t be necessary – unless you think it is.” Rogers picked up his fork again and smiled briefly. “Text me when you’re back at the apartment. I’d like to know that you got back safe.”

Maria rolled her eyes as she made for the door. “Yes, Dad.”

She got down the stairs and out the door without any further interruptions, and paused on the porch of the manor house to take a deep breath of chilly air. And shivered as she exhaled, watching it steam in the snowy evening of the Lithuanian countryside, and suddenly envisioning inky darkness and spiralling stars overlaying the snowy parking lot and the empty fields.

Sleep. She needed sleep. Peace, quiet, and the chance to breathe. Nobody looking over her shoulder – either operationally or personally.

She didn’t know what had gotten into Rogers.

Okay, so maybe she did.

Outside the bar in New York, he’d confronted her:

_You can tell someone, or I can tell someone._

_I’m not one of your soldiers, Captain._

_No, you’re one of Fury’s. So I’ll just report to him that you’re resisting medical attention after injury and I’ll let him chew you out._

Maria had let herself be checked out by the EMTs that night because he _would_ have brought it to Fury’s attention. Just as he’d do now, if she didn’t take steps first.

Maria climbed into the Jeep Cherokee and tossed her duffle on the passenger seat. All right. She’d talk to a doctor and get herself cleared. She’d take pills or anti-stress medication or whatever the doc decided she needed. And she’d be fine.

She started up the Jeep, took a deep breath, and drove off into darkness, with the cold, clear stars shining above her.


	2. Chapter 2

There were numerous medical options for the Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Maria rather liked Fury’s choice, old Doc Russo, who was grumpy, sarcastic, and no-nonsense, and didn’t try to paternalise her. However, Russo would also report anything that he found to Fury, something which, yes, she would need to do eventually but on _her_ terms.

Which meant someone with a reasonable level of medical clearance, equipment and connections, and either no opportunity to report to Fury or with a senior who would back her up.

Put in those terms…

“I must say, this is really quite unusual,” Agent Jemma Simmons gushed as Maria was welcomed aboard the plane. “And a little daunting. I mean, not that _you’re_ daunting, Commander, that is…”

Maria glanced over at May with an eyebrow raised. May shrugged slightly, which Maria took to mean the verbal diarrhoea was normal.

Frankly, she was finding the young doctor rather daunting herself. Field agents she understood – get the mission done, whatever it takes. Medical personnel, however – particularly the young and enthusiastic – were always a wild card. They might cover your tracks, keep you under the radar; but they could also put you in the crosshairs, make a target out of you.

It all depended on the individual.

Maybe coming to Coulson’s team hadn’t been such a good idea, even if she’d gone through May.

“…but I’d have thought you’d use someone…well…older. More experienced.”

Maria didn’t sigh at the obvious fishing. “I’ve seen the reports on you, Agent Simmons. You’re young, but you’re good at what you do.”

“Yes, thank you, it’s so lovely to be recognised, but perhaps someone more in the formal line of command. Dr. Hopewell or Dr. Nimashalanya, perhaps?” Simmons looked apologetic. “Not that I mind doing this, or have doubts in my ability, that would never do, after all, and it’s just a routine check. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about, is there?”

Maria looked at May. Then she looked at Jemma Simmons. She didn’t look at the young woman calling herself Skye, who was oh-so-casually sitting at a terminal in the medi-tech lab, listening for all she was worth. Maria hoped Skye wasn’t recording them at the same time, because the last thing she wanted was for this to get out – into S.H.I.E.L.D or the broader world.

“If I use someone in the formal line of command, it’ll be all over HR and Statistics within the hour. I don’t want to deal with the speculation. I need someone to do the medical workup on me who isn’t going to gossip about it with half of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I would have thought that doctor-patient confidentiality—”

“Won’t hide the fact that I had a medical appointment.”

“And you need to hide that you—” Simmons paused as she saw Maria’s expression. She looked to May, who gave the slightest shake of her head, and exchanged a glance with Skye. “All right, then. We’ll start with the basics and work it up from there. Now, everyone out – except Commander Hill, obviously.”

May walked to the door, then paused and turned back, pinning Maria with a look. “Come see me when you’re done.”

The doors hissed shut behind her.

“Well,” Simmons said, her over-bright manner hardly disguising her curiosity, “let’s get started!”

She’d never much liked the medical examinations that were required of S.H.I.E.L.D personnel – bad memories of the Marines, looking for any excuse to discharge her. And sure, S.H.I.E.L.D wasn’t like that – most of the time – but the uncomfortable feeling that she was being inspected remained.

Still, as medical examiners went, Dr. Jemma Simmons was one of the better ones.

And if she wasn’t exactly formal, she was certainly better than old Doc Russo glowering at Maria with those eyes that had seen everything, and rather more than Maria liked.

Maria was well aware that the facilities on ‘the Bus’ were top-class. It was hard to ignore when you looked at the requisition and repair bills. However, it was one thing to know that The Bus had cost more than the GDP of some nations, and another to actually lie on an examining table while a portable MRI took scans of her body from head to toe, and the hologram of the examination hovered in the air a few feet away.

Nothing but the best for Coulson.

It made her wonder a little – if she’d taken a Chitauri scepter through the heart, would she have gotten TAHITI? A second chance? The Bus?

Yeah, nope.

“Is it hurting?” On the edge of her field of vision, Simmons was looking at her, frowning. “Do you feel any pain?”

“No.”

“Oh. It’s just, you were frowning, and I thought—”

“This is my usual expression.” Maria went for droll and watched as the younger woman hesitated over whether or not to laugh. Finally, Simmons cracked a smile. A very small one, but Maria would take what she could where she could.

“I’m sorry, I’m just a teeny bit anxious. I’ve never done a medical examination for someone so high up in the Directorate.”

“Yet I still put my pants on one leg at a time.”

“Ye-e-es.” Simmons ducked behind the screen where the data from the hand-held MRI was being transmitted, tapped a few buttons, and came back out smiling. “Well, I guess now you can demonstrate!”

Maria pulled on her trousers while Simmons went through the data, the dark eyes big and intent on the read-outs, a slight frown creasing her brow.

“So Agent Fitz survived his first field mission.”

“Oh, yes. He was quite pleased and proud of himself after.” Simmons said without looking up from the screen. “I couldn’t let that continue indefinitely, of course, so I pranked him. But it was nice to see him reassured.”

“Can’t be easy working with Agent Ward.”

“ _Agent Grant Ward_ ,” Simmons growled in dreadful mimicry. Then sobered. “Oh, I know I probably shouldn’t mock my fellow agents...”

Maria snorted. “Agent Simmons, mocking your fellow agents is practically a requirement of being an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Really?” Simmons brightened. “Oh good. Because it’s kind of fun. I mean, we were trying to prank Skye for a while, seeing as she’d never been at the Academy, but we got interrupted in the middle of it by the ghost of a man who’d gotten trapped between worlds. And that sounded like it made so much more sense in my head.”

“I’ve read the reports,” Maria told her. There were only a handful of people who were authorised to read those reports, and Maria was one of them. _To know what pots Coulson and his crew might be stirring,_ Fury said, although so far it seemed they’d been more about putting out fires than stirring pots.

Which was just as well – they needed a mobile group to manage those issues. And if they were keeping an eye on Coulson in the meantime...all the better.

Privately, Maria thought Fury had been mad to bring Coulson back. Madness was exactly what entailed with TAHITI and while a certain amount of delay could be built in given that Coulson wasn’t aware of exactly what had been done to him, even the test subjects who hadn’t known what had been done to them had eventually gone mad.

She’d watched the videos, the slow descent into madness of the test subjects. It made for painful viewing.

In the meantime, the reports from Coulson and his team and those interacting with them were forming most of their understanding of how Coulson was coping with his second lease of life. And when Maria walked off the Bus, her observations would be added to those others.

Even if, right now, her observations consisted of _I got to the Bus just as Coulson, Ward, and Dr. Fitz were walking off ‘to do manly things’ as Dr. Fitz was telling Dr. Simmons. Which Skye informed me probably involved alcohol, talking shit about how big their dicks were, and getting into a fight._

Dr. Simmons, meanwhile, was making little ‘hm’ noises, a faint frown on her face as she clicked between screens.

“What is it?”

“Uh, I’m not sure. I’d...actually, I think I might like to do another MRI – just a brainscan this time, no need to take your clothes off. If you don’t mind.”

“And if I do?”

Simmons blinked. “Well, I guess I’d have to forgo—I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s nothing, but just in case—”

“How about you start by telling me what _it_ is.”

Simmons hesitated. “You’re showing signs of irregular brain activity in the temporal lobe. It’s—” She reached for the tablet. “It’s easier to show you.”

The patch was yellow orange, glowing to orange as the MRI moved across her head. “This is usually dormant,” Simmons said. “Dark on the MRI. But it’s showing activity – bloodflow, electrical impulses – we don’t know what’s going on there, but your brain is definitely doing something. And your last scans,” she pulled up a second record, “don’t show it. Of course, that was nearly two years ago – you should really get that seen to. Officially, I mean.”

“Haven’t had time.” Maria swiped along the timeline, watching the glowing spot brighten and fade like a little explosion. In her head. “Is it a tumor?”

“No.” Simmons said hastily. “Nothing like that. Just an anomaly. Irregular activity, like I said. But we really want a full picture of your health – and you said you’d been experiencing blackouts which might be neurotraumatically related – so I’d really like to take another MRI, along with some blood so I can a few quick tests.”

“Quick as in a couple of hours, or quick as in a couple of days?”

“Oh, hours, of course. Naturally, I’ll send some out to the labs we know and get results back on them – I take it you don’t want to be identified specifically…?”

“No.”

“Right. Well, if that’s all okay, we could do that second scan now? Unless you really don’t want to...”

Maria submitted to the second scan, slightly adjusted for whatever it was the young doctor wanted to see better. It made her head ache, although she was pretty sure that was psychosomatic. MRIs didn’t _hurt_.

Then she went to see Melinda.

Agent Simmons didn’t ask if she knew the way, and didn’t offer to escort her. A minor security breach, but one worth noting. Not that Maria required an escort; she’d seen the plans back when they’d been on the drawing board. Fury’s ace-in-the-hole – along with all the other aces the man kept about him.

Still, it was one thing to see on the plans, another to see in the flesh.

Carpets and lounges. Mood lighting. A stocked bar. There was almost certainly a gym in here somewhere, as well as a kitchen, toilets, and probably a karaoke machine, too. Maria wouldn’t have put it past Fury.

“Nice bus,” she commented to Melinda as she sat down in the lounge opposite.

“It came with all the extras installed,” Melinda put down the tablet she was reading. “Why didn’t you go to Russo?”

“Russo reports to Fury.”

“Everyone reports to Fury sooner or later.” Dark eyes studied her with disconcerting sharpness. “Why did you get a check-up at all?”

Maria snorted and gently scraped her nails along the leather arm of the chair, debating how much to tell Melinda. The problem was that if she said too much then Melinda would guess the rest and if she said too little then Melinda would go fishing for answers Maria wasn’t ready to give. “Do the walls have ears?”

“Probably.”

“That would be why I’m getting a checkup here.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you’re being checked up.” Melinda gave her a long, hard look. “And coming here wasn’t the only reason you picked Simmons. You want information. But not from me.”

Amused, Maria remarked, “And you wonder why I won’t play poker with you anymore?” She paused. “Do you trust her?”

“Of course I—” Then Melinda frowned. “Skye?”

“Who else did you—? Ah.” It was good to be reminded that The Cavalry couldn’t analyse and predict _everything_. “I wouldn’t be going through you if that were the case.”

A pause. “I thought you might be worried about going over my head.”

“I’m always worried about going over your head.” Maria said lightly. “But I don’t need your permission to talk to Lian. How good is Skye?”

“As good as she thinks she is. Although,” Melinda added, “not nearly as good at eavesdropping as she thinks she is.”

There was a step, and Phil’s latest protege stepped out from behind one of the partitions. “Well, that’s depressing. Or not, considering I’ve never even been to super-spy school like the rest of you.” She took a seat and turned to Maria. “Does this mean you’re going to slap some kind of anti-listening bracelet on me, now? I’m assuming you guys have those sort of things, but I just got the last one off and I was kinda enjoying the freedom.”

“I’m going to slap you with an assignment.” Maria told her. “I need you to find something that our analysts missed.”

“How do you know they missed it?”

“Because I’ve been there and the reports were wrong.”

“Okay, well, I don’t have more than Level One access to S.H.I.E.L.D files.”

“You’re not going to need more than Level One access to S.H.I.E.L.D files,” Maria told her. “What I want isn’t going to be in S.H.I.E.L.D. I need the intel that our analysts couldn’t find.”

“And you think I’m going to be able to find them?”

Maria leaned back in the chair with a shrug. “You found your origins here at S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Skye turned on Melinda. “You _told_ her?”

“No,” Melinda’s mouth pulled out a little at one corner. To someone familiar with her it was as fierce as a grimace. “But you just did.”

Maria blinked. She had no idea what Skye was talking about and she wasn’t minded to get into right now. What she found interesting was the disbelief – the air of betrayal – although irrelevant to the situation in question. She’d read May’s reports on Coulson. She hadn’t paid so much attention to Coulson’s reports on his team. Maybe now was a good time to catch up. “I’m not interested in your history, Skye. Just what you can find me about a facility in Lithuania. And…” She thought about the man on the road, hesitated, but asked anyway. “You’ve been looking up details about the Centipede super-soldier program, the data on Extremis.”

“Yes? And?”

“Have you found anything in those programs that uses prosthetics? Metal prosthetics?”

“Like…regular limbs? Or, you know, like a Terminator with a machine gun arm?”

“All of the above.”

“Whoa? Really like a Terminator?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. No, not Centipede. They’re mostly doing biomods – enhancements, you’ve probably seen the reports I know Coulson sends. Okay. I can look, but I want—”

“No,” Maria interrupted. “I don’t have the leeway go looking for something I shouldn’t be accessing.”

Skye stared at her. “You’re the Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. If you don’t have leeway and access, who does?”

“Coulson.”

“I’ve asked Coulson.”

“So, wait for his answer.”

“You’re the Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I’m the _female_ Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D,” Maria told her. “If I get caught with the wrong data, the list of people who’d happily see me crucified is about 95% of the men in S.H.I.E.L.D. and 45% of the women.”

“I thought S.H.I.E.L.D was an equal opportunity employer.”

“It is. Unfortunately, society doesn’t take an equal opportunity perspective, even within an equal opportunity employer.” Maria spread her hands wide. “Welcome to the real world.”

“Sucks,” Skye said. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do, but the kind of search you’re asking for will probably take at least a couple of days.”

“It’s not urgent.” _Just important._

“You know, this is like growing up and discovering that being an adult means stuff like responsibilities and not just a later bedtime.” Skye made a pointing gesture towards the front of the plane. “And I’m going to go do some research now and leave you two to do emotionless faces at each other. Have fun.”

“Emotionless faces?” Maria felt a vague sense of offence. “You know she reminds me of someone.”

Rather than rising to the bait, Melinda gave her a hard stare. “And _I_ know someone threatened you to get checked out.”

“Your imagination is getting better with age.”

“While your ability to lie is getting worse.”

Maria’s cellphone buzzed in her hip pocket, signalling a call, drawing both their gazes.

“And saved by the bell,” said Melinda, rising. “I’ll make us something to eat.” She paused and looked down at Maria. “It was Rogers, wasn’t it?”

Thankfully, she didn’t wait for confirmation, just headed for the kitchenette, leaving Maria staring at the screen and reflecting that she’d known about the disadvantages of coming here for her medical check-up and she’d chosen it anyway.

Then she answered the phone.

“This is Hill.”

“How was Vilnius?” Natasha asked.

“Cold. Icy. The facility wasn’t what we were told it was.”

“So I hear. You want me to find contacts?”

“And ask around about new programs. Research has thrown up several new waves of biogenetic modification; there’s got to be some older ones mixed in there, just for good measure.”

“They do like their supersoldiers,” Natasha remarked. “Of course, there’s a lot of a supersoldier to like.”

“Personal experience?” Maria asked, a little more cattily than she’d intended, and grimaced to herself.

“Not yet,” came the smooth reply. “Any particular aspects you want me to check?”

Maria glanced over in the direction where Skye had vanished and figured that she didn’t need to send Romanoff hunting on the biomodifications front too, so she just said, “American weapons with old Soviet training.”

“American weapons and Soviet training.” Natasha paused. “You got all that from the way they shot at you?”

“It was a very distinctive shooting style.” Maria waited a beat, imagining the smile that had touched the Black Widow’s lips. They both enjoyed that show. “Can you get me the intel?”

“I can ask. Does this even us out for Reno?”

Maria rolled her eyes, safe in the knowledge that the other woman couldn’t see here. She didn’t have Romanoff’s preoccupation with the ledger; but then, she didn’t have Romanoff’s history either. Maybe if she’d racked up that much death and destruction, she’d grab hold of anything that allowed her to make the amends count. “If it makes you feel better, you can clear the board.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“You can drink me under the table the next time we go out.”

“Which only means you’ll never come out drinking with me again.”

“And when was the last time I came out drinking with you?”

“Six months ago, the bar in New York.”

_bright lights, sharp shadows, pain in her throat and the stumbling spin of stars and space and darkness..._

Maria tensed as, between one blink and the next, the world was dark and rocky and the midnight sky overhead was full of stars. _No, not now. Not here._

“Hill?”

The phone was in her hand, and she was back in the Bus. “Yeah,” she said, and thought she managed to hide the breathlessness in her voice. “Still here.”

“Where’d you go?”

Maria certainly wasn’t going to tell her. “When can you get me the information I asked for?”

There was a moment’s silence. Maria could almost hear the gears turning in Natasha’s head. Then Natasha said, “Give me a month.”

After ringing off, Maria let the phone slip to her lap and closed her eyes. That was two times in a week, both of them while doing something else – not a good sign. And now that others knew about the fugues...

“We have guest rooms in the aft, you know,” Melinda said, coming back with two plates, a sandwich sitting on each one. “You can take a nap while you’re waiting for Simmons’ results.”

“Thanks,” Maria said, taking the plate being offered to her. “But I’ll pass.”

“Might be the last break you get for a while,” Melinda noted, going back into the kitchen to get them cans of soda. “I hear the Insight project is gearing up.”

“Fury thinks it’ll give us a breather,” Maria prodded at the sandwich. “What’s in this?”

“Tuna salad and arugula. Don’t pick out the arugula. It gives it bite.”

Maria bit into the sandwich and didn’t comment on the arugula. She actually liked the taste of it, the bitterness giving the sandwich some zing. And Melinda had remembered the squeeze of lemon her mom put in; just the way Maria liked it.

They ate in comfortable silence, choosing not to talk. Melinda didn’t quiz Maria further on the situation, and Maria didn’t comment on the eyeballing Melinda was giving her.

They were nearly finished when Skye came back. “So,” she said brightly, “how’s the staring competition going? Hey, I’m just asking. Ooh, tuna salad!”

“What did you find?” Maria asked.

“So, a quick skim of the web – yes, yes, I know, it’s not what you asked for, but I always start with the obvious stuff – found a whole bunch of advertisements, largely of the ‘better living through chemistry’ kind. You know, super-strength, super-speed, become your own supersoldier – you’d think someone would ask the Hulk just how that turned out. Anyway, it matches up with the overall increase in superhero-type activity we’ve been seeing ever since New York. These are a little more open though – you know, those ads you see on late-night TV. Lots of claims, lots of disclaimers, not a lot of evidence or result.”

“I doubt any of those would produce an actual super-soldier.”

“You’d think. However, there’ve been some spotty results – some claims that were bogus, others which show a marked improvement in strength, speed, intelligence. Although I don’t know how you’d measure the intelligence of your average late-night TV viewer – isn’t it pretty much a given that anyone calling those numbers has no brain?”

“The valid results – not the placebo effect?”

“Well, that’s the big question mark. But I made a list of the companies which were advertising such things – and there’s quite a lot of them – and cross-checked them against various organisations which have been following the results – there’s a lot of those as well.” Skye tapped on the tablet, then did something that projected the data onto the screen to the side of the room. “Of the most successful ten clinics – as reported by both the companies themselves and the checking organisations – six of them are owned by companies with enough links that they’re probably just holding companies under an umbrella group. And this is just in the US. There’s been a lot of action overseas, too – again, varying success, but once I found those, it’s simply been a matter of finding the connections.”

“And you’re telling me there’s a lot of connections.”

“A _lot_.” Skye tilted her head. “Worth looking into?”

Maria considered it. “As long as you don’t vanish down the rabbit hole.”

“Hey, the rabbit hole led to Wonderland,” Skye noted. “But point taken. Anyway, I have the data – you just need to let me know what other parameters I should be looking for. Do you have a point of contact?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D email.”

“Really? And some guy in tech support isn’t just going to check what’s going into Deputy Director Hill’s mailbox? Okay.” Skye shrugged. “I’ll have the basics for you by the time you leave. Assuming that’s not going to be in the next, oh, thirty minutes.”

“I’ll stay at least until Phil gets back,” Maria said with a look towards Melinda. “I want to have a chat with him.”

“You make that sound really ominous. Does S.H.I.E.L.D have courses in how to make it sound dire? Okay, I’m joking. And going, because your sandwiches are making me hungry. Plus, you and her in the same room? It’s kind of intimidating. Just a smidge.”

Melinda looked caught somewhere between exasperation and amusement at the pronouncement – an expression which Maria was willing to bet was pretty common around this place. A minute later, they heard movement in the kitchen – Skye putting together a sandwich.

“Phil’s pick, huh?”

“She wouldn’t have been mine,” Melinda said after a moment. “But she’s very good at what she does.”

“She’d have to be to keep on top of things around here.” Maria exhaled. “Better living through chemistry. Not quite what I was looking for.”

“You didn’t know what you were looking for,” Melinda pointed out.

Amused, Maria studied the other woman. “Are you defending her?”

“I’m saying you didn’t know what you were looking for, so finding anything is a start. She’ll keep looking.”

“I’d expect nothing less from one of Phil’s.” Maria put her plate on the side table and sat back, taking a moment, even as she reviewed what she had ahead of her – back to DC, give Fury the Vilnius report, follow up on the debriefing and acclimatisation of the agents found in Vilnius, look over the final specs for the programming on the Insight Project—

“So.” Melinda broke casually into her thoughts. “Tell me about Steve Rogers.”

“There’s a Cliffs Notes edition out,” Maria told her.

“But I’m interested in the Maria Hill edition.” Melinda set her plate on the couch beside her. “Much rarer, and with new insights.”

“You think you’re funny.”

“I know I’m right.” The basilisk stare bored into Maria. “There aren’t many people in STRIKE with enough weight to push you to get a medical done. And most of them wouldn’t care, one way or the other. I imagine Rogers would.”

“He’s being a good leader,” Maria said, allowing a note of sarcasm to enter her voice. “Taking care of his people.”

“Good for him. You could use some taking care of.”

Maria glared at Melinda. The lean on _taking care of_ had been distinctly sexual. Which wasn’t Melinda’s usual angle... She flicked her fingernails on the arm of her sofa. “Maybe I should be asking who’s taking care of you?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

Which meant that there _was_ someone. Not Simmons, Fitz, or Skye: Melinda wouldn’t climb into bed with a junior, let alone anyone who couldn’t at least match her physically. And while Phil was a possibility – they had a shared past after all – he’d been hung up on his cellist for several years now.

And that left one…

Maria knew better than to comment – either on Grant Ward, or on Melinda’s choice of him as bedpartner – given Agent Ward’s psychological and emotional makeup and Melinda’s scars after Bahrain, she doubted it was anything as intimate as ‘lovers’. Instead, she just said, “All right. So now you know all my secrets. What do you plan to do with them?”

“Blackmail, of course.” Melinda didn’t bat an eyelash. “Not today, though. Perhaps next week. Always nice to have you owe me a favour.”

Maria rolled her eyes. “I’m terrified.”

“You are.” Melinda studied her. “Maybe not terrified. But worried. Are you going to tell me about Vilnius and what happened there?”

“No. Are you going to ask Simmons?”

“No. But I will request a copy of the medical report.” Seeing Maria’s expression, Melinda tilted her head slightly. “Do I have to tell you that you’re not alone in this?”

Since it was exactly the same thing Maria had told Melinda after Bahrain, the natural answer was, “No.” But Maria couldn’t quite forbear from adding, “Finally learned that, did you?”

“I always knew it,” Melinda told her. “I just…wasn’t comfortable. No more than you are.”

“And you think I’m going to learn that, too?”

“Yes. Someday. I can be patient.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time,” Maria said.

“Maybe,” was the answer.

* * *

_The air was full of Chitauri, crowded with them on their skimmers as they shot people down where they turned and ran, the air full of their screams of terror, screams of pain._

_She fetched up against a marble column, reaching for a weapon she didn’t have, and cursed, then looked around for the businessman’s weapon – the one she’d seen in the harness—_

_No. That had been weeks later, in the bar--_

_And she hadn’t even been in New York that day— She’d been watching Stark outrace the tactical nuke the World Security Council had authorised—_

_Yes, the Avengers were the mistake that saved the world; but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be their own heroes._

**_Together_ ** _, murmured a voice, warm and intent. **Together we are more.**_

* * *

“So,” Fury said when Maria had finished her report on Vilnius and added her recommendations for rehabilitation and reacclimatisation of the recovered agents, “tell me how Phil’s team are settling in together.”

Maria blinked. “Sir? You get the reports from Melinda.”

Fury folded his hands on his desk and fixed her with a gimlet eye. “Don’t play dumb with me, Hill. You recall when I promoted you to Deputy Director, I told you that your life became S.H.I.E.L.D’s. You happen to remember that?”

“Am I allowed to forget it, sir?”

“Now, when I say that your life becomes S.H.I.E.L.D’s, I wasn’t kidding. So tell me why I have to receive the notification of an unscheduled medical check-up from Agent May rather than through your usual channels.”

“I hadn’t gotten around to it.”

“Don’t lie to me, Maria.” And, that simply, the name made it personal.

“Sir, you know I can’t afford a black mark on my medical.”

“You can’t afford a black mark anywhere,” Fury told her. “We both know that. However, I thought you were at least going to trust me enough to know when to keep things out of the reports that other people see, and not go behind my back to get yourself checked over.”

As a general rule, people occasionally sympathised with Maria for working with Fury, who was considered something of a wolf. A papa wolf, perhaps, when looking after his agents (and the possessive was definitely noted) but a wolf nevertheless. Within two days of her assignment as his aide, Maria had realised her problem wouldn’t be the Papa Wolf in Fury, but the Mama Bear.

“I’m still waiting for an explanation, Hill.”

Maria exhaled. “I don’t have one,” she said baldly, meeting his eyes. “I’ve been having...dreams...since the night with the terrorists in New York. Two months ago, they became fugues.”

“That night was six months ago, and two months of fugues is not a joke. You’ve been hiding this from me?”

“The fugues never happened when I was doing anything – just on the edge of sleep, or when I was sitting down. I thought it was a temporary thing.”

“And when exactly did you realise it wasn’t? That is,” Fury noted, “when exactly should you have told me about these dreams?”

Maria had a choice. She could go ahead and lie and risk Fury finding out, in which case his trust would be well and truly gone – Fury gave second chances but not third ones. Or she could tell him and risk whatever came. And she trusted Fury, yes, but he was a commander with missions and people to look after, and if she couldn’t meet the grade, she’d be dropped – and there went most of what she’d worked for the last eight years of her life.

She hated taking risks. They might be necessary, but she’d avoid them as long as she could.

Well, her time to avoid had just run out.

“During the Vilnius mission.”

His brows rose. “In the middle of the mission?”

“Afterwards. On the drive back.” She took a deep breath. “You’ve read the report. I got out of the compound with Carreras and encountered the man on the road.”

“Your own personal Terminator.”

“I’ve never seen prosthetics operate like that,” she said. “The interface was seamless – as fluid as the Iron Man technology – if not more.”

“And your blackout?”

She should have known Fury couldn’t be diverted like that. “After I got away,” she said. “Between the compound and the safehouse. I started driving down the road, blacked out, and regained consciousness at the safehouse.”

Fury stared at her with the narrow-eyed look of someone coming to a conclusion on their own terms. Maria stared back, knowing perfectly well that she’d fucked up; the only question was how bad.

“And, this blackout... Nobody noticed it?”

She was tempted to lie, but she was this deep in, she wasn’t going to get out easy. “Rogers. He was first on scene.”

Her boss leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “Now what do you think would have happened if you’d lied to me just then? Don’t say you weren’t thinking about it.”

Maria exhaled. “Rogers already came to you with this.”

“As a matter of fact, he did. And let me tell you, I’m none too pleased to be the last to know that you’re having medical issues.”

“I went and got checked up at the Bus.”

“Which is the reason we’re having this conversation and I’m not bumping you down to Level One Agent. Tou’re going to have that report passed on to me, right, Commander?”

“Wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise.”

“At least not anymore.” Fury regarded her for a long, tense moment. “Believe it or not, I know the hangups of being a woman in this organisation. Well, maybe not of being a woman – but of being...not what they expect. That’s my strength – and yours. Most people assume someone like Alex Pierce is going to be in charge – whitebread. Damned good whitebread, but also the kind of person they want to see at the helm.” One long finger indicated them both. “ _We_ are not expected. And that’s good – because this job brings the unexpected and we need to fight fire with fire.”

“So I’ve noticed, sir.”

“Good, you’ve recovered enough to get the sarcasm back. You’ll need that to deal with Doc Russo when he looks you over.” He held up one finger when she shifted in her seat. “Hill.”

Maria wondered if, someday, she’d be able to exhibit that force of personality – to just roll over people like a tank. Did it come with age, or was it something you developed with experience? “I saw Dr. Simmons.”

“So May said. But I’d like you to see Russo all the same. I don’t care if it’s off the books, but I want to know what’s happening as told to me by someone at least half as old as I am. Call it an old man’s foible.”

She thought of it as an old man’s foolishness, but knew better than to say anything of the sort. Fury eyed her, as though waiting for her to come up with a response, then seemed to figure that she wasn’t going to say anything more.

“You’re going to follow up on what was really going on at Vilnius of course.”

“Already on it.”

“Good. Because I’m in agreement with you – the amount of firepower they had around that generator was disproportionate compared to what Rogers and the retrieval team encountered.” He eyed her. “Are you kicking yourself over Gregson and Lowell?”

“They’re STRIKE. They knew the risks.”

Fury nodded. “Never gets easier.”

“Reassuring.”

“Well, I’m just an all-around reassuring guy.” He laid his hands down on his desk. “And this is the point where I tell you that you did good at Vilnius – just in case you didn’t know it – and that you fucked up when it came to that medical – again, just in case you didn’t know it.”

“Also reassuring,” she said, deadpan.

“Hah.” He studied her, then activated the screen interface. “Go. And don’t forget to see Russo.”

Like she’d be allowed to forget it. Maria headed for the door.

“Hill.” When she turned back, Fury’s expression was steady. “He might have been your own personal Terminator. But you were your own Kyle Reece.”

Maria blinked. “Thank you, sir.”

* * *

_The air was sharp as knives in her throat, every breath dragging sharply in her chest as she stood at an icy-cold rock face, facing out into a sea of stars - a universe without limits, holding more in it than humanity could ever imagine…_

_Gravel crunched, and he stepped out of darkness and onto gritty sand. Six feet nothing, lean and built, with the mask covering his face and the stance of someone who’d never had to give way, and the metal arm gleaming deadly beneath the stark starlight._

_Maria turned and sprinted for the narrow opening in the rocks, looking for an escape, a bolt-hole, any options out. Something in her knew there were none, but she kept running. Through the twisting turning rock-walled canyons, passing some branch passages, taking others, trying to be random, trying to escape. But always behind her trod the steady crunch of footsteps._

* * *

Exhaustion was never a comfortable companion, but Maria found it particularly unpleasant when faced with a medical examination she didn’t want to take.

Even if she quite liked old Doc Russo.

But the appointment went smoothly enough.

Russo was brisk, almost terse, but Maria had been seeing him pretty much since her preliminary medical for entry into the S.H.I.E.L.D Operations Academy. He was familiar with her medical history, and, more importantly to Maria, familiar with her.

“Well, Simmons is certainly thorough. I have PET and CT scans, and the standard MRI study, as well as her notes. She’s waiting on biochemical testing back from the labs in Saturnus. Should’ve thought Coulson would keep those kids busier. I’ve left her as the medical staff to be informed of your test results, and just asked her to forward on anything she receives to me.” He peered at Maria over his glasses, his mouth a straight and reproachful line. “Maybe it’s time she learned about the vagaries of high-level agents and their psychological security issues. What worries me more are the blackouts.”

“They’ve always happened on the edge of sleep until now.”

“‘Until now.’ Two words nobody in the medical profession likes to hear in relation to their patients telling them of their problems.”

“I navigated a vehicle through afternoon traffic, all the way from the facility to the safehouse while in the blackout,” Maria pointed out. “My passenger was unconscious, and Captain Rogers’ STRIKE team will assert that I arrived without assistance at a destination nearly sixty miles from where I started.”

“Assert arrival without assistance,” murmured the Doc, typing something into his computer. “Well, that makes it all okay, then. And now I’m faced with a difficult decision. Do I leave you on active duty, hoping you don’t endanger yourself and anyone else with another blackout, or do I take you off and risk Fury’s annoyance at losing his right-hand?”

“Phil was Fury’s right hand.”

Russo snorted. “Have you been listening to those people again?”

“Just saying what most people say.”

“Well, don’t say it here and don’t think it in your head. You know better than that, Hill.” Russo grumbled. “So. My verdict. No more field missions for you for a month, then I’ll reevaluate. I see Fury’s got you overseeing the Insight Project, so you’ll be here in DC during that time where you can hassle, harry, and harangue to your heart’s content. If another blackout happens – even at the edges of sleep – then don’t sit on it; report it to me. Get enough sleep and enough to eat – and don’t think I won’t check. My minions are everywhere, and they’re not half as cute as the little yellow bean things my granddaughter loves.”

Maria was tempted to salute. “Yes, Doc.”

“ _Yes, Doc,_ ” he mimicked as he started labelling vials. “That’s what they all say before they do exactly what I told them not to. Now go away and get shit done, child.”

As she made her way to her office on the Directorate level, Maria reflected she very much felt like she’d dodged a bullet of sorts. Russo was a lot like Fury in that sense: he didn’t get angry so much as he got snarky. Not that snarky was that much better – Maria could hold her own, but she’d always felt like she came out a little flayed.

So she might have been feeling just a touch raw when she found Steve Rogers waiting for her outside her office, a cardboard tray with two coffees and a small paper bag balanced on his knees while he scrolled through something on his phone.

“Captain.”

“Commander.” He held out the tray. “Coffee?”

“Apology?”

“No.” The blue eyes stared back without remorse. “Coffee.”

She huffed as she unlocked her office and strode inside heading for her desk. Initiating her desk interface, Maria found him closing the door and looking around at the compact and crowded space. “You got me in trouble, Captain.”

He blinked then frowned. “Better me than someone else.” He placed her coffee to the side of the desk, and added the paper bag, which was showing sign of grease seep. “One of those is mine, by the way.”

A peek inside showed the white chocolate and cranberry cookies that were Maria’s occasional snack at the cafeteria on Level 4. “I should take them both.”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that, Commander. It might come down to a fight.”

She bit back a smile and just bared her teeth at him in response. “Here and now, Rogers? You’d lose.”

“I’d still have to fight,” he said, sitting down in the visitor chair. “Out of principle, if nothing else. The theft of white chocolate and cranberry cookies is unconscionable.”

“Theft? You gave them to me as a gift,” she said solemnly. “And then threatened me in my own office.”

He opened his mouth and paused. “I was about to say there isn’t a jury in America that would convict me over a matter of white chocolate and cranberry cookies, but I think that comes a little closer to ‘there isn’t a jury in America that would convict me, period’ than I like.”

Maria snorted, then picked her cookie out of the bag and handed it back. “Welcome to the land of the free, and the home of social media and public opinion,” she told him. “Now would you like Facebook and a Twitter Feed with that?”

Rogers took the bag and sat back, ripping the paper open to get to the cookie. “I think you already have S.H.I.E.L.D personnel looking after that, commander.”

She wouldn’t be surprised if they did. “So what brings you to my office this morning, Captain – other than cookies and coffee?”

“I think cookies and coffee are about it,” he told her, taking a sip of his coffee and sitting in her visitor’s chair as though it was a perfectly normal, ordinary thing for Captain America to be doing. “And I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“You do remember the part where I’m not one of your people?”

“I don’t seem to be able to forget it. You keep reminding me of it, after all.” He bit into the cookie and brushed the crumbs away.

“Why are you here, Captain?”

“Because I’ve decided to keep an eye on you, commander.”

Maria paused. “Why?”

“Who else does?”

“Fury. And a few other people,” she added.

“So what’s one more?”

Maria didn’t point out that it was that the ‘one more’ was _him_. That it felt…awkward…to have Captain America keeping an eye on her. No, as a matter of fact, it felt awkward to have _Steve Rogers_ keeping an eye on her. Captain America was a hero, a leader, and a commander – his concern was expected, if not entirely comfortable. One of his people? She didn’t like that, but she could do that.

Steve Rogers, formerly of Brooklyn, bringing her coffee and a cookie, sitting in her office? That felt like a very different matter.

Not that there was any way to say that. She’d be shot down mid-sentence, dismissed for being oversensitive, teased for thinking this might mean anything more. Concern was not care; she’d learned that early on in the Marines. But she didn’t get to say that – not directly.

“How many times do I have to point out that I’m not your responsibility?”

“You can point it out as often as you like.”

“But you’re not going to listen?”

Another smile – this one through cookie crumbs. The effect was...disturbingly un-Captain America. “Nope.”

Maria sighed.

They were starting to build up.

“If it helps, commander,” Rogers said after washing down his bite of cookie with a swig of coffee, “Think of me as a necessary evil.”


	3. Chapter 3

_She was running through the darkness, sharp stone and bitter breath biting at her with every step. An endless, unthinkable dreamscape of basalt canyons beneath an endless, starry sky._

_The wind whispered in her ears, an unnerving litany of voices._

_It hurts it hurts make it stop there’s no choice but to go on this wasn’t what I signed for better stronger faster more need to be more to protect and serve never been anything am I still human don’t feel any different what how who where why?_

_Their voices rose to a cacophony – an echo that grew instead of fading away, a thousand John Connors crying out for help, ricocheting through her brain with their demands. “Shut up! Shut up—I can’t think—”_

_He came at her from out of a side passage, pale skin and dark hair, and a metal hand that gripped her by the throat and slammed her against the wall of the canyon—_

* * *

There was coffee at her desk the next morning. Just coffee, no cookie.

“Gina?”

“It was on my desk when I got in, still steaming hot,” came the reply.

Maria took the coffee and sipped it as she worked through various mission scenarios with the agents in her pool, consulted with Victoria Hand at the Hub on a number of security issues, and started digging down on the Vilnius mission.

Within an hour of studying the data and pulling up comparable reports, Maria realised Vilnius wasn’t the only mission that had gone sideways recently.

At first, it looked like it was mostly Eastern Europe that was experiencing issues. Then she noted a citation from another mission – one in South America – and followed that up. And found...a rabbit hole. Intel that was right but incomplete. Intel that was right when it had been collected but which was wrong mere days later. Reports which said one thing on the main servers, but said something else on the local versions.

Something was wrong in the state of S.H.I.E.L.D intelligence.

Over the next few days, she checked dates and timestamps; personnel and agents. She gathered her own intel, noted everything she found, made lists. There was some serious blowback happening, all through S.H.I.E.L.D and as she gathered the data and drank the coffee that kept turning up at her desk each morning, she wondered why Fury hadn’t said anything.

_You’re going to follow up on what was really going on at Vilnius of course._

Okay, so he had.

Maria sat back and swivelled her chair so she could see out the window of her office, across the waters of the Potomac River. Her boss never did anything without a reason, so the question was why Fury had decided to let her read herself into this.

Also: how long this had been going. Because this wasn’t just recent - some of these missions were years old.

Her earpiece hummed an incoming call – Romanoff.

“This is Hill.”

“I hear Steve’s been bringing you breakfast in the mornings.”

Maria glanced at the cup, its contents now cold and unappealing, and chose not to comment. The coffee arrivals had continued – sometimes just left on Gina’s table, sometimes brought in with something to eat. And if he didn’t turn up in the mornings, he turned up in the early afternoons, right around the time she needed her second caffeine hit.

It seemed Rogers was taking his ‘keeping an eye on her’ quite seriously.

She’d learned to live with it.

“How’s Hanoi at this time of year?”

“Sweltering. Minh sends his regards and wants to know when you’re going to come back so he has a chance to properly break your heart. I’ll have to tell him you’re too busy breaking Captain America’s heart.”

“You try telling Rogers not to bring you coffee of a morning,” Maria said, a little exasperated by Romanoff’s persistence. “The man is a steamroller.”

“I can think of plenty of women who’d get steamy if he only rolled over them.”

Okay, so she’d asked for that. And Steve Rogers and his apparent adoption of her was not something she wanted to discuss with the Black Widow – now or ever. “Tell me about Vilnius.”

“Capital of Lithuania, dating back to mediaeval times, it’s pretty picturesque if you like that kind of thing.”

“The facility wasn’t picturesque,” Maria noted. “Not if you ask Roy Anderson and the other agents who were held there. Then again, he saw it from the inside.”

“There were a lot of things happening in there,” Romanoff noted. “Like military-style training exercises in the surrounding woods. Not something that you’d see from satellite,” she noted, “but some local hikers spotted them while out taking a stroll in the fall. One had Ukrainian military experience – sniper unit, so he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Organised?”

“He took some footage, reviewed it, but knew better than to put it up anywhere.”

“Scared him?”

“Yes. And when I spoke to him he didn’t seem like the type to scare easily. I counted nearly two hundred of them, and they all move like trained killers.”

“That’s a lot of trained killers. And hard to hide.” Maria paused and figured the question was a fair one to ask. “Red Room?”

“Not so distinctive that I could tell. But it’s unlikely: the Red Room was only interested in women and these were all guys. But you were right; American weapons – I’ll get Clint in and we’ll look at supply chains – and Soviet training. _Old_ Soviet training – some of the styles and forms go back to the 1970s.”

“Which means someone taught by the old school is managing this.”

“Yep.”

“Sometimes I hate being right.”

“You’re in the wrong job if you hate being right.”

“This is true. Thanks for the intel.”

“I was bored. It was something to do while the STRIKE boys were showing off their dick sizes.”

Maria snorted. “Occupational hazard of working with STRIKE.” She paused, and nearly didn’t ask the next question. “Rogers, too?”

“He’s a guy. He has ego. Therefore, dick size is a factor.” Natasha sounded matter of fact. “But he’s not a dick about it.”

“Good to know.”

“Isn’t it?” There was a creak on the other end of the line, like Romanoff had just leaned back. “So, about this morning coffee delivery...”

Maria rolls her eyes. “You know, Clint once said that S.H.I.E.L.D is simply a pool of gossip out of which we occasionally run missions.”

“He does have a way with words.”

“More concerning; you’re proving him correct.” Maria let that sink in, guessed that Romanoff was smiling, and let a small smile touch her lips. “Have fun drinking the STRIKE boys under the table.”

After the call was done, she leaned back in her chair, her mind working over the hole in their intel sources, over a scientific facility turned military, over an operative who’d moved like death—

_She strode through men who prepped for war, loading their weapons, checking their ammo. Their glances rose to her face, then dropped away, as though afraid of what she might do if they made eye contact too long._

**_Onward loyal soldiers, marching as to war..._ **

_On a signal she didn’t see, they turned and filed out the door; the tramp of their footsteps shaking the ground beneath her as they filed out. Obedient little automaton droids, serving commanders whose word was to be obeyed. She’d been one of them once..._

**_We can’t let you take the training..._ **

_The laugh choked in her throat. No, she’d never been one of them. Turning, she caught a glimpse of a metal arm and tensed. Spun into a crouch, reaching for a weapon she didn’t have as he did the same—_

_Then paused, staring at the dark-haired operative as he rose to stand, exactly mirroring her movements – no, Maria realised. As her reflection echoed her movements in the mirror, one hand pressing against her chest—_

_Who was he? Why was she dreaming of him?_

**_Maybe the question is what you’re doing in my dreams_ ** _, said the reflection, and the voice was...droll. Oddly gentle and not what she’d expected from him._

**_What are you?_ ** _Maria asked, staring into dead grey eyes. Then, as she and the reflection dropped their hand to their side, it hit her, **What am I?**_

**_You’re like me,_ ** _he murmured, **a necessary evil.**_

Maria started up from her chair, the indrawn breath nearly choking her as she took in her empty office, the Potomac below, the phone buzzing with an incoming call. She fumbled for the phone, looked at the display and silently winced.

“Dr. Simmons.”

“Commander.” A pause. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine.” Maria grimaced, sighed, then added, “I just had another moment while sitting at my desk.”

“Really? Did you dream?”

Maria stretched the fingers of her right hand, remembering the way the operative had echoed her movements in the mirror.

“Oh dear,” Simmons added when the silence stretched out just a little too long, “I just realised how very intrusive that sounds. It is relevant to your medical state however. The initial test results we did on you are starting to show that your biochemistry is all over the shop, particularly in your brain – hypothalamus, pituitary, amygdala – I imagine you’d be seeing some rather odd dreams.”

“Some.” Maria modified her voice, trying to sound less ungracious. Simmons was trying to help. “They come during the blackouts, and they’re a little disturbing.”

“Yes, from what I’ve read, sudden changes in biochemistry are going to do that – only these aren’t really sudden, are they? I looked up your medical file – with permission from the Director of course – and started tracking back through your check-ups – you really should have them every six months. But about eight months ago, just after New York, you were tranqued while out with friends, but for whatever reason – maybe the adrenaline – you didn’t go down. According to the report, you helped the Black Widow finish off the attack, even before Iron Man got to the party. Actually, he sounds rather annoyed about that.”

“He was. I took a dart to the throat – I thought it was a tranq, but...”

_...a galaxy of stars out in endless space..._

“The medical report at the scene indicated no further injury and subsequent tests showed no sign of anything out of the ordinary. However, your own report indicates that the shot was intended for Dr. Foster, and that the mercenaries who attacked the bar had transport to remove Dr. Foster from the scene.”

_...a steel coffin in the back, leather straps for throat and waist, arms and thighs..._

Maria didn’t have words, and after a moment, Jemma continued, “Did nobody follow that up with you?”

“We were a little busy in the days after New York.”

“Well, it looks like that’s the origins of the biochemical changes. Exactly what they were trying to do to Dr. Foster – and therefore, what’s happening to you – we don’t know, although once we have further data on it, we can certainly extrapolate...”

“Have you told Doc Russo about this?”

“I was just about to. Oh, maybe I should have called a meeting so I didn’t have to say it twice?”

“It would have been less trouble for you.” But Maria was just as glad not to have to dissemble before Doc Russo, who knew her and was less likely to be excited over the medical details of what was happening to her that he’d fail to notice her exhaustion. And he’d have things to say about her running herself into the ground.

“Well, I could just bring him in on this call...”

“No.” Maria hastily added, “It’s not needed right now. You can tell him without me.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll get his opinion on some of the test results. And then we’ll talk again.”

“Check my schedule.”

“Right. Well. I don’t suppose there’s any chance that you’d be willing to, um, be wired up so we can measure your current brain patterns? I mean, it’s one thing to do a point test, but a continuous sequencing—”

“No.”

“Not even during sleep?”

“No.”

“Uh, you wouldn’t talk to one of the clinical psychologists—?”

“When hell freezes over.”

“Right. Okay, then. I’ll just contact Dr. Russo now. And, oh, I probably shouldn’t say this, but you look like you could do with some rest, commander.”

If it was obvious enough that the young doctor was noticing it, then it was probably pretty obvious. Maria kept the sigh out of her voice. “Things are busy.”

“Aren’t they always?” Simmons sounded a little resigned, although still with that determined note of youth to her voice. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take care of yourself.”

* * *

Maria’s problem with taking care of herself was mostly that she wasn’t very good at it.

Doc Russo had a few pithy things to say about that when she called him about the fugue. “And you’re going to drive home, aren’t you?”

“Seeing as I can’t fly.”

“Use that job title of yours. Take that damn monster of Fury’s – the one with all the mods. If you’re going to kill yourself with work, I’ll be damned if I let you take anyone else out with you.”

She took the ‘damn monster’ - an SUV that had been tricked out with everything, including military-grade armor, and a voice-activated interface. She went home. She ate leftovers from the previous night’s take-out, and watched the video from Natasha’s Ukrainian contact.

Natasha was right, the men in the video moved like trained killers – a rougher, less-graceful version of the operative standing on the road, playing chicken with her humvee. Maria dropped a note to Fury then and there. She didn’t know if he’d see it straight away, but he would by morning. She could make it a priority, but it wasn’t – not yet. It would be, though – and someday soon. If someone was training up an army like this, the only question left to ask was when and where the war would start – and what the trigger would be.

It could be anything, Maria thought as she started the outline of the full report to send to Fury. Didn’t need to be aliens, didn’t need to be supersoldiers. Somewhere, someone would start a situation that would light a match under it all, and then everything would blow sky-high, Avengers or no.

Her sleep was restless, and if she dreamed, she didn’t remember it.

_dark canyons racing by in a blur, starry skies gleaming endlessly above, cold air biting sharp in her throat_

Not clearly, anyway.

That morning was finishing up her findings on Vilnius – and then heading over to the Director’s office when, upon receipt of the report, she got called in by Fury.

“Russo said you had another one,” he said without preamble. “And that this might all lead back to the bar incident.”

“That’s the current theory.” Maria shrugged. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that – it had been nine months ago and in the chaos of everything after New York, it wasn’t exactly something she’d thought about too much. “There’s been no signs of anything otherwise, sir.”

“And we still have no idea why Foster was targeted or what was supposed to be done to you.” Fury’s mouth thinned. None of the men who’d targeted the bar had survived that night, taken out by either Natasha or Maria in the ensuing fight. “Blake hunted up the leads Barton gave us on the assault team?”

“He found they mostly went back to Europe, although one led to Africa, and two had ties in Asia.”

“And the clean-up crew never found an injection vial.”

“No.” It was one reason she’d gotten out of the follow-up assessments. There’d been no proof that she’d actually been shot up with anything – just eyewitness reports that she stumbled, and Rogers’ insistence that she should get herself seen to. Maria had felt a bit sick that night and a bit dizzy the next morning, but she’d put it down to the chaos of the evening. She’d been fine by Monday morning and back to work with no apparent issues – at least, not until the blackouts began.

Fury was watching her with the look that gave the impression of being able to read her every thought as it passed through her head.

At last, he noted, “There was plenty of glass around after everyone had shot the place up. Guess it’s easy enough to miss a vial. But that’s neither here nor there, now. You will keep Doc Russo updated on what’s going on with you, and he will keep me updated on what he and Dr. Simmons are looking at regarding your changing biochemistry.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now,” he said, sitting back in his chair, “the rabbit hole in our intel.”

“You knew about it. You set me onto it.”

“Can we fix it?”

Maria frowned. “We don’t know where the hole is; who’s causing it. There are no common agents – barely any common factors—”

Fury sat up abruptly. “ _Barely any_? You mean you found _something_ in common?”

Surprised by the intensity, Maria took a moment to answer. “Yes. But it’s tenuous—Not even a factor, really, just a connection: the _Lemurian Star_.”

“The satellite launcher?”

“All the big discrepancies have been routed through satellites launched through the _Lemurian Star._ The incidents have been on the increase in the last ten years, and we’ve been seeing more of them in the last three years since we commissioned the _Star_.”

“It was a good proposal from Sitwell,” Fury mused. “Keep our data on our own channels instead of risking it through other hardware.”

“He was right. We _don’t_ want to piggyback off shared satellites, not with the kind of data that S.H.I.E.L.D’s passing around. But it looks like someone’s hacked into our encryptions via the launch program on the _Star_ and this is the result.”

“That’s a bit more than a tenuous connection, Hill.”

“We still have no proof,” Maria pointed out. “This is conjecture until we can pull the satellite launch drive off the _Star_.”

“You leave that to me. I’ll get it sorted – and keep you updated on it.” Fury sat back in his chair. “Nice work, Hill. Now go and have lunch.”

“Go directly to lunch? Don’t pass my office, don’t skip my meals?”

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“If I wasn’t smart with you, sir, you wouldn’t keep me around.”

The noise he made as she went out was something akin to ‘humph’. But Maria figured it was a good ‘humph’. And she was hungry.

She picked up lunch at the food court on Level 23 and headed back to her office to eat it. She didn’t eat alone in public space if she could possibly help it – too many bad memories of high school. And lunch at her desk would be fine – having done that much, she could take an hour that was a little slower before she got into the afternoon’s work.

Except that when she got back to her office, she found Rogers sitting in her waiting area, gossiping with Gina. At least, Maria presumed it was gossip since Gina was defending her choice of reading material – one of the entertainment mags that always promised the latest and greatest ‘news’ about the lives of the rich and famous.

“Commander.” Rogers stood, grabbing the lunchbag on the chair next to him. “Gina wasn’t sure if you’d be back in the office for lunch, but she said I could wait and try my luck.”

Maria glanced at her aide, and got a bland and innocent look over hands spread wide. “Come in, then,” she told Steve. “But leave the trash rag outside, please.”

“I was curious,” he explained as he followed her in. “There was an article about Stark in there – Stark and Ms. Potts.”

“Are they breaking up, fighting, or having a baby?”

“Fighting.” Rogers dropped into the chair in front of her desk. “According to ‘sources close to the couple’ - no names mentioned – although I noted Colonel Rhodes’ picture, as well as a blurry shot of what might be Banner’s head from the back.”

Maria snorted as she opened the box with her sandwich in. “Fighting is par for the course with those two. If they weren’t fighting, I’d be looking for a bunker.”

“You’re friendly with Pepper, aren’t you?”

She wasn’t sure she’d call it ‘friendly’. After the night in New York that had gone so badly south, she and Pepper had started corresponding by email, text, and phone, with the occasional meet-up when their schedules matched.

 _Perhaps it’s a little old-fashioned feminist of me,_ Pepper had said back when she’d first asked if Maria would like to meet, _but I believe that us women in power need to stick together._

Maria hadn’t pointed out that S.H.I.E.L.D was an organisation that had been started by an ‘old-fashioned feminist’: a woman in power, who’d seen the need for women to stick together in it – and put programs into place accordingly. Peggy had encouraged her female operatives, agents, and leaders right up until her retirement - and beyond.

“We catch up every now and then,” was all she told Rogers. “But I haven’t seen her since the Extremis debacle.” Talked and texted, yes, but that was all. She really had to visit Pepper at some point.

“I’d have said the Mandarin was more of a debacle than AIM and the Extremis project.” Rogers wrapped his fingers around his sub. “Given that AIM managed to kidnap the president.”

“That would be part of the debacle.” At his raised brows, she explained, “A Vice-President plotting the death of his leader? Who was reached by a terrorist organisation through the simple expedient of offering his granddaughter bio-prosthetic perfection? Where the terrorist organisation was a front for corporate raiding?”

“But those are civil and criminal concerns,” Rogers pointed out, “Not in S.H.I.E.L.D’s area of concern.”

“Not traditionally perhaps. But it’s all merging. Human experimentation and the pursuit of physical power usually has a political and social component.” She held his gaze. “You wanted to be able to do something about the world as it was.”

He frowned. “I didn’t seek out Erskine and the serum. I just wanted the chance to fight back.”

“And that’s probably why you didn’t turn into something like the Red Skull,” Maria shrugged as she prepared for another bite. “And no, you haven’t run for President yet, but you’re not yet thirty in terms of years lived. You’ve got time.”

Rogers choked on his bite of sub, and after a few seconds of coughing, accepted Maria’s bottle of water to wash down the sandwich and clear his throat.

“If I ever run for President, you have my permission to take me down by any means necessary, because I’ll clearly have lost my mind,” he told her when he could speak again.

“I’ve got that on record,” Maria replied, taking back her water bottle. “Anything you say can and probably will be used against you...”

“Like the article?” Rogers asked. “The one about Tony and Pepper’s deteriorating relationship?”

“Welcome to gossip of the the 21st Century – truth need not apply.” Maria wondered whether or not she should say it – if someone else hadn’t already warned him. Then figured it wouldn’t hurt to keep it fresh in his head. “Keep in mind that you’re probably on their radar, too.”

“So Natasha keeps reminding me.” He stared into his sub. “So there’d be the whole publicity thing to work past, even once I asked a woman out.”

“The dangers of fame.” Maria kept her voice light. His definitive use of the pronoun suggested there was someone, and, really, she didn’t need to know. “You’ve been warned.”

When he looked up, his expression held a hint of regret before he lifted his chin and shrugged in a gesture of resignation. “Guess I have.”

He changed the topic after that – a little sharply, and rather awkward, but Maria was relieved. She didn’t really relish the thought of playing romantic advisor to Steve Rogers.

* * *

_She was racing against the clock, racing a bomb on its way into New York, racing a world about to end, chasing Barton, his eyes lit blue with madness as he reversed the Jeep ahead of her—_

_But no, she’d been in reverse, driving madly backwards, the gun in her hand, ready to fire—_

_“You can’t chase forever,” said the person in the passenger seat beside her, an easy voice with an easy accent. “Sooner or later they’ll turn and fight.”_

_And when she turned to look at her passenger, the operative looked back at her over his facemask, his eyes a steady blue-grey—_

* * *

On Thursday at 0548, Maria’s phone rang with the news that a major retrieval operation in West Africa was crashing and burning in no uncertain terms.

While it wasn’t one of hers, she’d done a lot of work in the setup and development of the op, and the news that it was all going down the tube was less than pleasing. Especially once she realised, looking back and forth at the intel compiled on the operation, that the data had been repeatedly bounced through the new satellites during the planning stages.

The _Lemurian Star_ had struck again.

No time for that, no chance to do anything but damage control. There were agents on the ground and they needed what she could give them.

Maria dragged her hands through her loose hair, then messaged Gina to let her aide know she wouldn’t be in and why.

Then she got to work.

By 0800 hours, she’d been in two conference calls, consulting with the agents in charge. The op was in the midst of a major rework, and new resources were being applied to help get the situation stable. It was lucky that both Ayi Amah and Phas Mbe were experienced and flexible agents who were more than capable of changing things up as the situation demanded, and turning things around on a dime.

Yes, it was iffy and risky to change things on the run, but when Will Maynard put that to her, she pointed out that the alternative was to crash and burn. At least this way, Amah and Mbe would have a chance of getting out.

Meanwhile, Maria pulled one of the Comms and IT tech analysts out of the general pool to route communications through alternative satellites; NSA, MI5, general communications. The signals were scrambled and encoded by S.H.I.E.L.D protocols, but they could be broken – eventually. Right now, she judged it more important to have the correct data get through than to make sure that others couldn’t spy on it.

And when she next spoke with Fury—

Around midday, she got a text. The sender was Steve Rogers. _Thought you might like a lunch break, but Gina tells me you’re reworking an op. Call if you need extra help._

She didn’t message him back – no time, and not really any way to answer. How the hell did you turn down Captain America’s offer of help? Better not to respond at all.

Her phone was silent for a while, as her video communications were routed through her computer and she’d turned off her email notifications for the duration of the crisis.

Around 1400 hours, the operation in Burkina Faso was completed with most objectives reached. The call-in she received from Agents Maynard, Ayi Amah, and the support staff was a relief.

“Many thanks for the intel, Commander,” Ayi said, massaging her scalp through the short springy curls of her hair. “And for your assistance in sorting it.”

“Agent Mbe is stable?”

“Grumpy,” Ayi said with a laugh. “I take that to be stable.”

Maria rang off and sat back in her chair. With the video off, she pressed her hands to her eyelids and let her shoulders sag. Those damned satellites again. Fury was really going to have to do something about them.

And speaking of...

She called in to her office. “Gina.”

“Commander. West Africa?”

“All clear. I need to talk to Fury. Preferably this afternoon and open.”

“This afternoon open?” Gina’s fingers tapped madly across the keyboard, “That’ll be after hours.”

“If I have to.”

“I’ll set up a request.” There was a few seconds more of tapping, then, “That’s gone. Oh, and Captain Rogers came by earlier.”

“So I hear.” At the expectant silence on the other end, Maria conceded, “He texted me.”

“Ah. Well, he wanted to know if you were free for lunch tomorrow.”

This time, she ignored the implicit question and simply said, “Get me the appointment with Fury.”

After she rang off from the call with Gina, Maria took a shower, drowning herself under the hot spray for rather longer than usual. Too many things coming together, too many things falling apart, and holding it all together was taking a toll she wouldn’t be able to pay for too long, the way things were going.

And then, on top of all that, Steve Rogers wanted to be friends.

_I can think of plenty of women who’d get steamy if he only rolled over them._

Maria carefully blocked out the thought that, under other circumstances, she might have been one of them. And then because thinking about Steve Rogers while standing naked in a hot shower was liable to turn into extremely unprofessional behaviour, Maria turned the shower off, dried and clothed herself, then sat down at her computer and started checking the mail she’d been ignoring all day.

Office notifications and S.H.I.E.L.D-wide announcements were noted and deleted. Operation briefings, debriefings, and reports were filed in the correct folder set and removed from her inbox. She was reading through a note from a friend and fellow agent over in Israel when her system chirped with the notification of an incoming mail from Skye with an encoded zip attached.

_So, this is the most recent stuff we have on Centipede. I’ve also pulled the data we have on Mike Petersen and the modifications Centipede did to him for reference, although you probably have access to that yourself and probably easier. The Centipede Group is the only one that seems to be doing biomods with any kind of prosthetics – most others are just going the enhanced metabolism route._

_When I looked through the various companies doing the enhanced biomods they all really come under three umbrella companies. I’ve listed the subsidiaries under the relevant umbrella company, as well as the data I could dig up about them – which wasn’t much. Proprietary all the way. If you want me to dig, I can do that; right now I figured it was better not to set off any flags._

_Coulson mentioned that you helped him refine the searches about the agents who brought me in. So, thanks for the help there._

_Skye_

_ps. Does this makes us even in super-spy accounting, or do I still owe you?_

Maria snorted at the postscript, and contemplated a response. A glance at the clock showed she didn’t have the time, so she saved the files to her drives before shutting down her tablet and heading out to meet Fury.

The Marine Corps War Memorial wasn’t one of DC’s more popular attractions, but on an early spring evening, it was busy enough to cover a wander-up meeting.

Exactly where Fury kept his ‘imma interrupt your photo taking to tell you ‘bout my service in Vietnam and my seventeen grandkids’ outfit, Maria didn’t know. But he certainly managed to look the part of an old man reminiscing about the more exciting parts of his life without stepping into hobo-land.

She kept him in the corner of her eye as she took photos of the memorial like a good tourist, and so wasn’t surprised when he meandered up, tucked his hands in his pockets and asked, “West Africa?”

“We retrieved the cache, but tipped off at least one organisation to our presence. The intel which caused the problem was routed via _Lemurian_ satellite.”

“Yeah, that’s really starting to bother me.”

“Did you want me to do something about it?”

“I’m already on it,” Fury told her. “Gotta justify my big shiny office, after all. But it’s gonna take time to setup if we don’t want to show our hand first time someone scrapes off the paint job. At least five weeks, maybe six.”

“I put a workaround in place for the Burkina Faso op. Did you want it for your communications?”

“And you’re not offering it across the organisation because?”

“You don’t want us to show our hand.”

“Good call.” He considered it, rocking back on his heels. “Can it be used for specific communications?”

“I’ll have it set up so you can.”

“Do that. Can’t drop off the grid entirely, but at least I can keep the private stuff private.” Fury sighed and stared up at the figures raising the flag that waved in an unseen, unfelt wind. “This job used to be easier.”

Maria thought about that. “Less complicated maybe, fewer variables.”

“That’s what I said.” Fury started to wander away. “Easier.”

* * *

_She was driving – again at the wheel, again in a Jeep driving through a tunnel—no, through a cave—no, through canyons beneath the cold brilliance of the sky. The canyons suddenly changed, morphing from craggy shapes into people – a landscape of bodies, all shapes and sizes and races and nations— She braked, but the Jeep wouldn’t slow down and she yanked at the wheel to no avail—_

_But the nearest man she was about to hit stepped out of her path – a neat and graceful turn that left him still close enough that she could see his smile, bright teeth in the dark of his face, before he was gone and Maria met the gaze of a woman in a thick quilted jacket who swung a little boy up out of the Jeep’s way – casual, unrushed, as though she had all the time in the world and didn’t need any of it._

_Nobody was getting hit, although the crowd stretched as far as the eye could see; Maria’s vehicle plunged through the blue-lit night, past a thousand faces: smiling, laughing, startled, curious, respectful—_

_Movement in the passenger seat – the operative again, looking surprisingly casual. One arm rested on the window ledge as his hair tossed in the slipstream, and the metal fingers drummed on his thigh in an arrhythmic pattern of beats and stops._

_Maria opened her mouth. Closed it. Figured what the hell. “Not going to try to kill me this time?”_

_“No.” She turned to look at him, and the eyes above the face mask seemed almost friendly. “They’re waiting for you.”_

_A buzzing noise grew in her ears—_

* * *

Maria opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling as her cellphone launched from the vibrating buzz into the ominous tones of the Star Wars Imperial March. She fumbled the handset, thought _Fuck_ as she noted the time – 0556 hours – and skipped the niceties. “What’s happened?”

“The Clairvoyant took Coulson. Last night, around midnight.” Fury didn’t mince words. “They were doing an exchange for Petersen’s son, and the terms got changed in translation. Petersen was in on it – traded Coulson for his kid.”

“Coulson would have gone quietly for the kid’s sake.” Maria grabbed for the water bottle she kept by the bed and snapped the lid open.

“That’s what I figure. Incidentally, Petersen got blown up trying to go back for Coulson, so he might have been in on it, but it was arguably under duress.”

Maria swallowed her long drink of water. “Who’s May asked for?”

“I’ve authorised Hand to work with them. Yeah,” Fury correctly interpreted her silence, “I know. But I have a missing agent with too much intel in his head, and the only other one with recent field experience in that group is Ward. Yes, May will come up to speed – and fast – but they’ll need Hand’s resources.”

“Are they looking for Coulson or hunting the Clairvoyant?”

“At this point? Looking for Coulson. Although hunting down this Clairvoyant is rapidly becoming a priority.” There was a sigh on the other end of the phone. “All our telepaths are accounted for?”

“Yes.” Maria had double-checked after May’s last report. “That doesn’t preclude a new emergence...”

“I’m not eager to push that panic button yet. Figured May might contact you for resources or intel, though. Thought you should be prepared.”

There was nothing in her inbox when got in to work just past 0700 hours. So she dropped a mail to May. _If you need another head in the search, I’ll make time._

She wasn’t entirely surprised when, fifteen minutes later, she had a response: _I’ll keep you in mind._

No thanks, but they needed none between them.

Keeping in mind the conversation with Fury earlier that morning, Maria did a quick pull of agents who’d be willing, if not available, to work with Coulson’s team in hunting down the Clairvoyant. She listed by rank and gave preference to those who’d worked with Coulson before, and who were cleared to know about Phil’s resurrection.

Why require more explanation than needful?

Gina came in and checked in with her; was told about the situation with Coulson and Coulson’s team, and given the shortlist of agents for the Clairvoyant hunt.

Of all the times that everything should start happening, Maria thought as she started opened the files Skye had sent her last week, it had to be now. And while they had resources and to spare after the recruiting drives of the last couple of years, it was still a lot to deal with all at once.

Reading through the data Skye had collated, Maria reflected that it was probably just as well that Coulson had co-opted the young woman for S.H.I.E.L.D. The report was brisk and thorough, with enough detail that Maria could see what was happening without getting bogged down in the minutiae.

Fifteen companies offering ‘a change to you, that’s about you, and for you’ as one of the more subtle advertisements ran. Maria skimmed over the pages detailing what the treatments involved – or were said to involve, since frequently there was no reliable information about what was being done to the individual. There were also no reliable results since most of the recommendations came from the individuals who’d undergone the treatment, and were universally praising the treatment.

“ _I feel like someone new. It’s changed my life._ ”

“ _I had my doubts, but seeing the results has made me a believer._ ”

“ _Not for the faint-hearted, but totally worth it._ ”

In spite of the glowing recommendations, however, Maria noted an underside to it. Skye had listed two bodies that had done independent studies of the work – one was a post-grad thesis in biochemical influences on the human body.

While the numbers were hard to confirm, it seemed that some of the volunteers for the treatment had developed side-effects – including, but not limited to, hallucinations, psychosis, and dementia.

 _And people still do it,_ Skye noted. _You gotta wonder if it’s worth it._

Maria’s opinion was no, not worth it. Not even close.

* * *

Around midmorning, her stomach growled in protest, and Maria realised she hadn’t had coffee – that she’d been waiting for the coffee visit from Rogers. He’d been on a mission with STRIKE over the last couple of days – a chemical arms dealer in Tangiers – but he was supposed to be back in town this morning and she’d unconsciously expected a coffee visit.

_Stupid, getting attached._

She made do with coffee from the executive pot, which – true to Fury’s tastebuds – had been boiled until it was thick and bitter and utterly foul. But at least it stopped her stomach from bothering her too much, and the taste took her mind off Rogers and his absence.

By the time lunch rolled around, even the coffee wasn’t doing her any good.

Gina was fifteen minutes into an hour-long meeting with the NSA, so Maria put in both their lunch orders, only to discover that half the usual delivery aides for the food court were sick, and the rest were overworked to the point where there was a 45-minute wait for delivery.

There were a few moments when she contemplating using her rank to jump the queue. Then shook her head. She needed to drop off some files at HR; she’d just go down and do that before going in to collect her lunch.

Gina made horrified faces at being pre-empted, but considering how many days she’d been waiting to get hold of this senior staffer, Maria waved her down.

HR was a mess since several requests had come in for personnel, and they were scrambling to keep up. This time Maria _did_ use her seniority to make sure her work got priority. If the data she was handing back wasn’t classified, it was still sensitive, and she wasn’t going to break the chain of security.

When the elevator arrived, it disbursed a handful of HR personnel, leaving one occupant who spared a glance from glaring out over the city to see who was joining him in the elevator.

“Hill.”

“Sitwell.” She glanced out the window and saw nothing of concern, which meant Jasper’s bad mood was probably related to something in S.H.I.E.L.D. But she waited until the doors closed. “Should I ask?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Seoul went belly up.”

She winced. “How bad?”

“Six agents hospitalised, one dead – Yun Jyuuk.”

“Shit. The Hong Kong office?”

“Still recovering from losing Chen; Jyuuk was the one best able to handle things up there.” Sitwell gave her a grim smile. “Ever thought about moving halfway across the world?”

“Been there, don’t want to do it again.” Maria glanced at him. “You heard about Coulson?”

The smile faded. “Yeah. I let Fury know that I’d join the task force if they needed extras – not that it seems they do. Everyone knew Phil—”

“He’s not dead yet.”

Sitwell snorted. “I’m way down the line anyway. Garrett’s champing at the bit, and I hear even Hand didn’t let the grass grow under her.”

“It’s more than just revenge: the Clairvoyant has us on the back foot.”

“He knows how to play us. Jesus, we’re S.H.I.E.L.D. You’d think we’d be better than this.” Sitwell said as the elevator stopped at the food court level, and the doors slid open to noise and chatter and crowds ready to head back to their desks for the afternoon slog. “And normality intrudes. What’ll it be today? Italian? Chinese?”

Maria looked over the court, barely pausing as she spotted a blond head over broad shoulders sitting with the large group from Statistics, although something in her gut twinged. “Thai,” she managed, her mouth dry, her tongue slightly thick. “I ordered ahead.”

“Good move.” Sitwell frowned a little as laughter erupted from the group. “You know, I never figured Rogers to be one for the fan club. Guess it takes all kinds, huh?”

Maria made a non-committal noise as another burst of laughter floated out through the space, then headed off to pick up her lunch order. She had to walk past the Statistics group, and her eye found Rogers without even trying. Then again, he was difficult to miss; he stood out.

Certainly more than a few of the women in the group were angled to face him – as Maria watched, a pretty blonde leaned into his space to say something to someone on his other side. He was smiling at whatever had been said – an easy, open smile. The kind he gave when to everyone. Nothing special.

“Commander? Your order?”

She took the brown paper bag, hefting it to check that there were two orders in it. Thing could get rushed at lunchtimes, and people made mistakes. Her stomach was most definitely not in the mood for mistakes, though – the scent of the food in the mess was doing her head in.

She didn’t look around as she left the food court, just headed straight out. Once she was in the elevator, she took one of the spots up the back, giving her a good view of the bright sun over the cherry trees lining the river as the car stopped at the various floors, letting people off and on.

By the time she got back to her office, Gina was off the phone. “I’m sorry about that—”

Maria waved the apology away as she deposited the takeout box on the desk beside her aide. “Did you get the agreement?”

“Yes. I wrote it up and copied the Director in.” Gina grinned, then blinked, and grinned again as Maria’s stomach growled at the waft of spices that rose up from the box. “I was thinking you looked grim. You’d better eat yours before your stomach eats you.”

Maria sat down at her desk, opened the box, and started eating, glancing over the emails that had come through during the morning. Nothing that needed her immediate attention, so she pulled up the files Skye had sent her and made herself focus on that.

To give the young woman her due, she was thorough. She’d collected not only data about the companies offering the biomodifications, but also the trilogy of parent companies that were backing them: Oyaji Biotechnology out of Japan, Sohnen Enterprises from Germany, and Domovoi LLC in Eastern Russia.

Scrolling through the data, moving icons and documents across the interface, Maria started skimming through the articles and notes Skye had found on the various companies. She did some research of her own, frowned at a couple of half-familiar names, and ran a cross-check of those companies through S.H.I.E.L.D databases.

Among those who’d sold supplies and equipment to the trio of companies were names Maria recognised as being research partners with S.H.I.E.L.D and it’s subsidiaries. She made a note to contact Hedwyn Biomechanics, Bariolos Santigua, U-Gin Biotech, and Wan Shing Lee Chemicals to put in a request for their records, and kept working her way through the lists.

She was working her way through shipping manifests, frowning at Skye’s next note when Gina buzzed her.

“Commander, I have Captain Rogers out here with your afternoon coffee. I’m sending him in.”

Afternoon coffee? Maria blinked as she pulled up the time, then started up as the door opened and Rogers strode in.

“Commander. Ms. Rodna said you haven’t had a break this afternoon, that you’d barely had a break this morning—”

“Captain.” Her fingers curled tightly around the edge of the desk – she’d stood too fast and the rush of blood to her head was making her dizzy, nothing more. “I—You—This isn’t a good time.”

He paused by the visitor’s chair, blinking in surprise. “Is— Is everything okay?”

“No, it’s fine. I’m just—I was in the middle of something—” And she needed to _not_ sound like an idiot. _Take a deep breath_. “I don’t have the time for you right now, Captain.” _Or any time you just walk into my office, certain that I’ll welcome you._

“Ah.” There was a moment when he looked like he didn’t know what to do. Then he put the tray down on her desk and took one of the paper cups out, replacing it with the brown paper bag with the cookie in it. “Guess I’ll get out of your way, then. I hope the snack helps.”

And, with an oddly furtive flick of blue eyes, he smiled briefly and he left.

Maria sat back down in her chair and felt…exhausted.

She stared blankly at the shipping manifests and could only see the woman who’d leaned into his space at lunch, flashing a quick look up at him to check if he’d noticed her. She wasn’t like that – a superhero groupie, flirting with the pretty and popular guys. And this was S.H.I.E.L.D, not high school, for God’s sake!

_He’s being friendly – he does it with everyone._

The coffee cup mocked her thoughts as it sat complacently in its little cardboard tray with the grease-spotted bag leaning against it.

Maria sighed and pulled the tray over. It was, of course, her usual, and she closed her eyes as she let the flavours wash over her tongue. All right, she’d text him a quick thanks later – once her body had calmed from the swift punch of adrenaline rushing through her. She was Maria Hill, Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D and she wasn’t going to babble like an idiot just because Steve Rogers had brought her coffee.

She pulled up the data and started working her way through it.

It was slow going, and painstaking on top of it.

The first law of intelligence work was that the paperwork counted – and not just the reports after the fact, but the documentation that frequently formed the base of S.H.I.E.L.D’s intel. And Communications and Analysis provided terabytes of data a week to prompt the smooth running of Operations – what, where, why, when, who, and how.

She was drinking down the last of the coffee and wondering why she’d shuffled back to this particular set of manifests when she remembered the cookie, and reached for the bag. Sugar and chocolate would help kickstart her brain again—

There were _two_ cookies inside.

Maria sat back in her chair, slightly floored.

Two cookies – one for her, and one for him. He’d brought her a coffee and a cookie – and his own to share. And when she’d shut him down and kicked him out, he hadn’t stayed to fish out his cookie, he’d just left it there so she could get on with the work she’d labelled as more important than him.

Maria looked at the empty coffee cup and the bag with the two cookies in it, and sighed.

There were times she really hated herself.

Then she logged into the security network and went looking for Rogers.

* * *

The _thud-thud-thud_ of fists against the punching bag echoed faintly down the corridor. And when Maria reached the entryway to STRIKE’s private workout area, she winced. The steady pummelling was worrying enough, but the soaked-through shirt was more concerning – he’d been at it a while.

She rapped on the door, even though she was pretty sure he’d heard her come in. “Captain. You forgot your cookie.”

Blue eyes met hers. “I left it for you. You seemed to need it more.”

Maria looked pointedly at his chest. “Clearly.”

He seemed startled, before he realised she was indicating his sweat-soaked shirt. He looked down at it for a moment then back at the bag. “Sometimes it’s easier not to think. But maybe I overdid it.”

“If you overdid it, I don’t think that bag would still be hanging.” She hesitated, then shook the bag lightly. “I have time now, and there’s still two cookies in here.”

Rogers stared at her for a moment, then rocked back on his heels and indicated the damp shirt. “I’m not really fit for company.”

Was he subtly trying to tell her to go away? Or was he just being courteous and not wanting to stink her out? Maria decided to take his comment at face value.

“We’re S.H.I.E.L.D,” she pointed out. “We should have at least one t-shirt that’s Captain America’s size in the general pile.”

‘Captain America’s size’ turned out to be one size smaller than Maria probably would have chosen for him. Not that she _needed_ the t-shirt to cling to his pecs, since she’d seen the deal in the flesh when he decided that a change room wasn’t necessary to swap shirts. However, Maria wasn’t complaining at getting an eyefull, although she drew the line at being obvious about it.

There was a rest area to one side of the workout room with a kitchenette and a water dispenser and some couch clusters to sit on. But Maria waited until Rogers had taken a long drink of water, and was sitting with his hands loose and limp on his thighs. Then she offered him a cookie.

“Did you get your stuff done?”

“Most of it. What’s left…it can wait.” She leaned back and waited for a moment. “So… Tangiers?”

She’d read the initial debrief before she came looking for Rogers. It didn’t make for pleasant dreams.

He looked at her, then down at the bag. “I’m pretty sure your job description doesn’t include ‘sounding board for supersoldier’.”

“Maybe it does. But yours definitely doesn’t include ‘coffee elf to deputy director.’” He looked up at her, amused, and she shrugged. “So here we are. With cookies. White chocolate and cranberry?”

“White chocolate, cranberry, and pistachio.” Rogers bit into his, chewed, swallowed. Smiled as he tilted his head at her. “If you haven’t started yours by the time I’ve finished mine…”

Maria rolled her eyes, but shuffled the bag down so she could bite into her cookie. She chewed ostentatiously, just to show that she was eating, and, after a moment, Rogers seemed to relax – at least a little. He sat back in his chair, stretching out his legs, staring at the table between them.

“During the war, I saw some...pretty nasty things.” His expression was tense and troubled. “Schmidt and Zola weren’t the only ones trying to work out how to make the perfect soldier; just the ones who got the furthest on the Nazi side. Some of the results were bad.” Blue eyes flicked to her face. “These were worse. I figured we were past that. That we were better. But the chemical weapons division had a...a human testing side. And the head scientist there was American. Brooklyn accent. He sounded like...home.”

“There’s never going to be a shortage of megalomaniacs,” Maria pointed out after a moment. “People who think they know what’s best for humanity.”

“I looked him up,” Rogers said, almost as though she hadn’t spoken. “Afterwards, I went hunting for his name – he was in S.H.I.E.L.D’s databases. He’d worked for us before. A contractor, but still...one of ours on an old project. And the people we found.... Some of them were still alive.”

“Did you offer them mercy?”

“There wasn’t much else we could do.”

All the horrors of human capability lingered in the silence that followed, and Maria fought back some of her own memories as Rogers turned to look at her.

“You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“I’ve seen such projects, yes.”

“In S.H.I.E.L.D?”

“Not anymore.” On seeing his expression, Maria explained, “Previous Directors of S.H.I.E.L.D weren’t always ethical in their pursuit of superiority in technology or manpower. When he became Director, Fury shut them down.”

Like any intelligence organisation, S.H.I.E.L.D had its darker histories; men and women – mostly men – who’d used power and authority to do the unthinkable, to perpetrate the inhumane.

“Human experimentation?”

“Only with the permission of the subjects, fully informed of the risks.” Although not always cognisant of what could go wrong. Maria thought of the blank-eyed men and women drawing on the walls of their rooms at the TAHITI project, and bit back a shudder. She met Rogers’ accusing gaze. “You were human experimentation, too, remember.”

“I volunteered.”

“Which is what S.H.I.E.L.D does when it comes to human testing. And I shut down the last of the projects doing supersoldier experimentation nearly eight years ago.” With the exception of TAHITI, since that had been volunteer and theoretical – right up until the point where it wasn’t.

“You did?”

“Always the note of surprise.”

“What about Banner and the Abomination?”

“Banner injected himself – contrary to all sane medical practice. And both the project that created the Hulk and the project that created the Abomination were conceived and developed by the Army. They floated the original idea with S.H.I.E.L.D, but when Fury vetoed working with them, they got a copy of the notes on Erskine’s serum and filled in the blanks. We still don’t know how.”

Although that was something to look into, what with all the other leaks they had on their hands.

“Grow your own supersoldier.” Rogers pressed his lips together, apparently displeased. With himself? With her? “Does it ever end?”

“Now that you’re here? Probably not.” Maria met his gaze when he looked up sharply. “You said it yourself – humanity has been looking for the _Übermensch_ long before Hitler got behind the idea, and Schmidt and Erskine began working on the serum. The world was just lucky that we got you rather than Schmidt or anyone else who was a whit less principled. But you’re still a living, breathing challenge to anyone who’s ever dreamed of developing their own supersoldier – or of being one.”

“So it’s my fault?”

“Did I mention fault? The seeds were there a long time ago; you’re just the first branch off the tree. But it doesn’t help that you were successful – and beyond Erskine or Schmidt’s wildest imaginings. You’re a hero – historically and in the present. You have everything they aspire to have and be and do – it’s not a question of _fault_ ; but your existence is proof that it can be done.” She thought of the hiker’s video; of supersoldiers churning through the snow like so much air, and fought back a shudder. “Now everyone wants their own Steve Rogers – on their own terms. Especially now that we know what’s waiting out there – what could become of Earth.”

“So it _is_ my fault?”

Maria sighed. “Don’t make it all about you, Rogers. You’re not the cause; you’re just the first by-product.”

He snorted. “Is that the Hill way of saying, I should ‘pull in my...ego’ as Romanoff would put it?”

“Does she use the word ‘ego’?”

“Yes. With the pause before.”

Maria snorted, imagining Natasha making the comment arch and pointed. “Yes, you need to pull in your – ‘pause’ – ego. Like I said, you’re not the cause, just the proof that it can be done, and the standard that’s been set.”

He grimaced. “I never thought—When I took the serum, I just wanted the chance to defend my country. I never imagined what would follow.”

“Does anyone really see the follow-on consequences of anything?”

“But the alternative would be to do nothing.”

“So we do what we can and live with the consequences. Like you did in Tangiers.” Maria ate the last bite of her cookie and crumpled the bag before three-pointing it into the wastebasket by the door.

“Good shot.”

A faint smile teased his lips, warming his expression, and Maria felt her stomach curl. So, she’d brought him his cookie, done her thing of listening to him, given him a kick in the butt. Job done, now it was time to exit stage left before she started thinking things she had no business thinking.

She shifted, stretching her legs. “I have to get back.”

“Yes.” Rogers glanced at the window. “I’m taking up your time.”

“Well, I guess I can consider this an off-shoot of work.” Maria smiled wryly as he frowned. “Sounding board for supersoldier?”

“Ah.” Rogers blinked, then rallied. “Then I appreciate you taking the time to bring my cookie.”

“It seemed a fair exchange for the coffee you’ve been bringing me.”

“Well. I won’t be in for the next few days.”

“Off roster?”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “I’ve been thinking of doing some riding. South,” he said before she could ask. “Maybe as far as Georgia, if I could make it.”

Maria blinked. “That’s some serious riding,” she noted. “Alone?”

“It’s not as though I have a line-up of friends outside of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“It can’t be that hard for Captain America to make friends.” In spite of herself, Maria thought of the blonde from Statistics, then pushed the thought away. That was none of her business.

“No. But it’s more complicated for Steve Rogers.” He paused. “How many friends do you have outside S.H.I.E.L.D?”

Maria hesitated. feeling defensive – and more than a little under the spotlight. “I’m not a good metric for a social life outside work.”

“Because S.H.I.E.L.D is your life?”

“There are worse ways to live. My point is you don’t have to be a lifer like me. You’ve got options beyond working here.”

“And if I don’t want to take them?”

“Then don’t. But at least know the alternatives.”

Was she being too emphatic? Maybe. He had an odd expression on his face, like he was in the mood for a fight again. After a moment he asked, “Is that your professional advice, commander?”

The question seemed oddly formal, without even a teasing edge, so she answered in kind, and ignored the sense that she’d missed something. “Strongly suggested, Rogers, that’s all.”

And she had to go. If she stayed seated, chatting with him, she’d never get up. Maria stood. “You’ll work it out, I’m sure.”

“Maybe,” he said, standing with her. “Thanks for the time.”

“It wasn’t a problem. Enjoy the time off.”

He shrugged. “I’m sure I will.”

Something wasn’t quite right; but Maria didn’t know what and she suspected if she stayed to find out, she wouldn’t leave. Walking out without looking back was the safest option, and she took it and tried not to feel like he was watching her go.

Just before swiping out the gym doors, however Maria paused.

Down the corridor came the distant sound of someone whaling on a punching bag.


	4. Chapter 4

Gina had left by the time Maria got back to her office, although she’d left a couple of memos.

_Director Fury called. Can wait for tomorrow._

_Contact from Agent May; will call back._

_Dr. Russo is looking for you, but presumes you won’t drop dead in the next forty-eight hours._

Was the last message a little ominous, or was Maria just tired? Maybe a bit of both. And all the way back to her office, she’d heard the _thud-thud-thud_ of Rogers’ renewed temper in her ears.

So she hadn’t done anything for him after all.

_You’re not responsible for whatever is going through his head._ But she’d said something to set him off again, and she didn’t know what. _Don’t think about it,_ she told herself, pulling up her research where she’d left it, on a set of shipping invoices detailing deliveries from various companies who she’d set a search to tracking. _Focus—_

The circular swirl in blue and grey sprang out at her in sharp understanding – Rohygia Medical.

It came to her in a rush. She nearly fumbled the interface as she opened up the video the Ukranian man had taken.

It was a little blurry due to the distance, but there, in the background of the men scrambling around in the snow, was the blue and grey logo on the side of a huge delivery transport. Rohygia Medical had been at the Vilnius facility—

_Dark hair tossed by the wind, the shadows of the tree canopy beyond him, patched with bright sky – so bright – but above the mask, his eyes were empty hollows—_

Maria shoved back from the desk, out of sensor range of the display. It froze, the soldiers scattered across the snowy field, caught in the middle of the exercise.

“Command; voice-activate.” She couldn’t sit and run the queries. Not with this knowledge buzzing inside her. “Give me everything on Rohygia Medical, cross-reference military involvement, biological testing on humans, and prosthetics.”

The files popped up, scattering across the screen, grouped by their search strings. Maria skimmed a few, then started reading deeper when it became clear a quick read-over wasn’t going to do anything. Not that she was going to understand it – a lot of the medical terms were simply too involved for her to do more than guess what they meant. She flagged those for sending to Doc Russo, and looked over the military involvement.

And there it was. Eastern European militias, particularly after the fall of the Soviet states. Stimulants of various types and kinds, boosters from chemical bases that were allegedly just shy of addictive, and the endless search for a serum to create the perfect supersoldier.

She flagged Fury. It was only 1900 hours; he was probably still—

“Hill?”

“Sir, I’ve found new data on Vilnius.”

“You’d better come up.”

* * *

It was Fury’s turn to pace as the reports came up on his screens, dark eyes flicking over the information with a commander’s eye for what was pertinent and what wasn’t.

He blinked as Maria replayed the Ukrainian hiker’s video. “And we haven’t seen any of these operatives in the field? No,” he corrected himself. “We’d have heard about it if we had. This kind of group isn’t put together for individual missions. And you think they’re not just an army but an army of supersoldiers?”

“I went looking for origin possibilities on the Terminator operative and got a lot of data about enhancement programs thorugh the US and the rest of the world. Rohygia Medical is one of the ones that’s allegedly been more successful than most. And they’re working with the Vilnius facility.”

“Which is where you encountered Terminator guy in the first place.” Fury grimaced. “We haven’t had anything about this from the agents we retrieved from Vilnius.”

“No.” She’d looked over the retrieval interviews as part of her research on the Vilnius facility. “I don’t think the Vilnius operation was as…” She winced, but it was the best word for the situation: “Foresightful as the Clairvoyant.”

“You just had to go there.”

“Sorry, sir. Is there any news?”

“Nothing that May’s seen fit to pass on. But Hand says the team arrived at the Hub, and they’re working on it.” Fury turned back to regard the screen again. “This complicates things,” he muttered.

She knew better than to ask what he meant. Her boss had more secrets than most people had hot dinners, and she’d learned to accept that a long time ago. As it was, her own secrets had more than a few layers to them, and after years in S.H.I.E.L.D, she knew hot the game went. If Fury thought she needed to know, he’d tell her.

“Sir, if I could take a small team—”

“Oh, here it comes—”

Maria persisted. “A small team on a recon—”

“Hill.” Fury waited until she fell silent. “You’re on medical stand-down – at least according to Doc Russo. If I go against the old man, he’ll have my balls. And not in the good way.”

“Need to know, sir.”

“My balls or your mission?”

“Both.” The humour helped. The urgency was a pressure beneath her breastbone – a question that required answering. She couldn’t explain why it was necessary, only that it was – and yes, it was annoying her with the persisting need to find out. But she still needed to know. And if she couldn’t get the authorisation for a team, she had maybe enough leeway to go in solo – if she could locate Romanoff’s Ukrainian contact—

“If I don’t authorise you for this, you’re going to go yourself anyway, aren’t you?” He stared at her, that one dark eye piercing as a lance. “Tell me, Agent Hill, is this personal?”

She looked him in the eye, unflinching. “My rank, Director, is ‘Commander’.”

It wasn’t quite a battle of wills. In a battle of wills, Maria would lose, every time: Fury had more years, more experience, and more weight. But her instincts counted, too. She’d learned that before she’d come to S.H.I.E.L.D, and everything she’d learned in S.H.I.E.L.D had only reinforced that. And this needed doing.

“A small team, you said. Just _how_ small?”

“Four people, including myself.”

“Did you have specific operatives in mind?”

“I even have a mission plan.”

“Chance favours the well-prepared?”

“That, and mule-ass stubbornness.”

Fury’s lip curled, a brief smirk of amusement as he pulled up the plan she’d shared on the S.H.I.E.L.D systems. His brows rose. “Huh. You’re willing to go up against Hand on this?”

“If necessary.”

A grunt was her only answer, and Maria waited patiently for the verdict on her admittedly brief mission plan. If he had additional questions, she’d make it up as she went along. Finally, Fury looked up at her. “They’re going to watch you like hawks. And if anything goes wrong and I mean _anything—_ ”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m giving you this rope to hang yourself with because we have enough trouble with just one supersoldier running around the place. The mind shudders at the thought of a whole army of them.” He typed in a few lines. “You’re cleared to go, with one exception. Agent Sudhani is still monitoring the Hephaestus project. So you’ll get someone else in his stead. My choice.”

Maria eyed him. That last clause sounded entirely too satisfied, and she’d learned to be wary when Fury sprung things on her like this. “Do I get right of veto?”

Fury snorted. “Hill, does this _look_ like a democracy?”

* * *

“So,” Akela said as they walked through the snow from the Quinjet to the safehouse, “Captain America?”

“Fury added him.”

“Oh, I got that part.” The dark eyes gleamed. “What I didn’t get was why he put a vacation on hold to come and help you out.”

“That would be the part where Fury ordered him.”

“And not the part where Maria Hill – Hardass Hill, the Ice Bitch of Operations Academy days – has friends?”

Maria glared, but the other woman only looked back, nearly expressionless but for the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. The biomechanical eye they’d put in was disconcerting, but that was probably exactly what Akela wanted. The other woman was really good at oblivious when she wanted to be. Or at playing it. It was one of the reasons she’d been such a brilliant agent: nothing stopped her – neither the opinion of their peers, nor gossip, or other small obstacles like closed doors, secure facilities, and enemy forces.

In that, she and Maria were much alike. They’d gotten on well during their years in training, first at the Academy, then under Coulson’s guidance.

And speaking of Coulson, better to do it now than later, where Rogers didn’t have Level 7 access.

“Coulson got taken by the Clairvoyant.”

Akela stopped dead in the snow. “When?”

“Nearly two days ago. You wouldn’t have heard.” Maria exhaled. “May’s on it.”

“She would be.” Akela looked like she was biting back a question, but Maria waited her out. “What happened to him?”

“You read the files on the Chitauri invasion?” Maria smiled thinly. “Fury had an experimental serum available. It was supposed to be for a mortally wounded Avenger.”

“And they used it on Coulson.”

“The serum was very experimental and the only way to curb the side effects was to wipe his memory of what was done to him.”

“That’s disturbing.”

“Yes.”

Akela exhaled slowly, a long puff of steam from between her lips. “I used to think S.H.I.E.L.D was doing good work in the world. I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Then I guess the question is, what are your alternatives?”

A short snort. “Should we be having this conversation? The Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D and a disgraced agent still wanted for treason?”

Before Maria could answer, the phone in her pocket buzzed with a message. _You coming in or is the meeting outside?_

“The troops getting restless?” Akela inquired and waved a hand at the muddy path they’d trudged into the slush on previous trips into the safehouse. “Lead on, Macduff.”

It was definitely warmer inside the safehouse, although only by a handful of degrees. And someone had started up the gas heater in the lounge, where it seemed they were going to run the operation since all the boxes and bags were piled in the centre of the carpet.

Upstairs, someone was moving about the kitchen – Maria could hear the distant clatter of crockery. And there were muffled sounds of someone moving around behind the pushed out sofa.

A moment later, a hand appeared over the back of the sofa and Isabelle Hartley hoisted herself up, her morass of curls piled up on her head in a twist that was no less elegant for shedding a couple of dustbunnies. “Also, you guys need to dock your cleaning contractor. I don’t think they’ve done behind the furniture since I was last working with S.H.I.E.L.D here, which was at least three years ago.”

“What’s wrong with the control room?”

“There’s the freezing, the freezing, and the freezing.” Izzy indicated the walls. “It’s not like we don’t have sufficient screens in here. And Mr. Muscles may be okay with icing over, but I’m not.”

Maria set her pack down on a nearby chair and pulled out her laptop, booting it up to log into the safehouse network. “Where is Rogers, anyway?”

“He shuffled a few things around, then went straight upstairs.” Isabelle began configuring the output from their laptops. “I think he’s in the kitchen.”

“Got the feeds,” Akela announced, and a moment later the satellite images flashed up on the screens, mapping out the dark buildings against the white fields of the compound.

“That’s your facility?” Izzy frowned at the real-time feed. “There’s not a lot of movement.”

There was no movement at all on the feed. Nothing but snow and the buildings sitting silent. No people moving around, no trucks going in or out, no steam rising off the conditioning outlets.

“It was live twenty-four hours ago... Heat signature?”

Akela handed her the feed controls then gently bumped Maria away from the laptop with her hip, and started typing in the long command strings.

“History data?” Isabelle asked.

“Working.” Akela scowled at whatever she was receiving back. “It’s pretty slow.”

“There’s a lot of extra stuff going on in the background processing.” The subroutine to avoid the _Lamarian Star_ satellites was a mess of spaghetti code, and the coder had apologised profusely for the mess, although she’d looked a little more relieved when Maria said it was just a temporary bypass.

It did the job, that was the important part. And if the data processing slowed...

“And behind door number two...” Akela muttered as one of the 50” screens started showing the satellite history of the facility location, the timestamp in the lower left corner working backwards by minutes.

Behind them, the door to the entryway pushed open. “Anyone for a—?” He paused as they turned towards him, a tray filled with crisps and snacks and steaming mugs in his hands. Then he looked over at the screen. “If I’d known we’d be getting straight into the mission, I wouldn’t have gone looking for snacks.”

“Comes with tea service.” Isabelle grinned at Maria. “He was a good choice.”

“Not mine,” Maria said dryly.

Rogers set down the tray on the table besides the laptops and turned to the screens, surveying the scene. “Unfortunately, Hill, Fury stuck you with me. You’ll just have to make the best—”

He stopped as the video started showing activity. The daylight faded from the landscape and the feed switched to night vision, a greenish glow outlining the trucks and other vehicles which started pulling up and disgorging people, tiny as ants. They scurried industriously across the screen, moving in and out of the facility, moving parcels and packages, shifting pallets with forklifts that spun in neat circles and whizzed back into the garage to emerge full again.

“I’ve been on S.H.I.E.L.D missions that were less organised than this,” Akela murmured, and Maria silently agreed.

Rogers shook his head. “They weren’t this organised last time we were here. Or we’d never have made it out. Although Hill had trouble on the road out.”

In the corner of her eye, she saw his glance towards her, chose not to respond, watching the screen and the activity on it instead.

Even at high-speed, it seemed clear that everything was moving with the silky-smooth fluidity of a well-managed operation. People were where they needed to be, doing what they needed to do, and they were doing it fast and well. The trucks were filled and on their way long before dawn, according to the timestamp. The remaining machinery was loaded up on a flatbed truck, which made its way out of the compound and down the mountainside. Then there were only the last few people to evacuate the facility, climbing into their vans and jeeps and moving out in the faint light of dawn.

By the time the weak morning sunlight reached the rooftops, the facility was empty.

“Who _are_ these people?” Isabelle wondered. “How the hell did they just empty a facility in a single night?”

“I’m more interested in _why._ ”

“Can you track where they went?” Rogers asked.

Akela started typing. “Doubtful. Although I can tie into the traffic system here, it’ll be luck of the draw. They don’t have the constant cameras that we or the UK do on the road system.”

Maria just stared at the screen, watching as the satellite recording progressed through the day all the way to the current hour, where it froze, the timestamp in the corner falling still.

“Hill?” Rogers was watching her, eyes steady. “Why don’t I trust that expression?”

Akela made a snorting sound over the tap of her keyboard. “Because it means we’re either about to saddle up for war, or she’s going to pull down the lightning.”

It would be best, Maria thought, to let them argue it out.

“I’m going in.”

Rogers’ frown was sudden and sharp. “Fury slated this as recon-only.”

“Fury didn’t know the facility was abandoned.”

“And I bet if he had, he’d still have told you ‘no’.”

Maria dared a glance at the other two. Akela had stopped typing and was sitting back in her chair, hands folded over her stomach. Isabelle rested one hip against the table and folded her arms. Both seemed more amused than annoyed about the change in plan, and even as she watched, Isabelle snagged a crisp from the tray on the table.

“Better than a floorshow and dinner?” She asked acidly.

“Well, I wouldn’t say no to the floorshow,” Isabelle swallowed the crisp. “Especially since Rogers already brought us dinner. But don’t let us interrupt you.”

“You’re not doing this, Hill.”

“And that’s me told.” Maria waited a beat, then interrupted him just as he opened his mouth to issue his next set of orders. “One. I outrank you. Two. Someone didn’t want us to see what was in there, since they took care to evacuate before we arrived but not so soon that we’d see what was happening. Three. As you’d know from the briefing, what was most likely being developed in that facility was supersoldiers – a whole army’s worth of them, Rogers, made for an unspecified purpose, and with no moral compass we can trust. Four…”

“Four?” He prompted when she paused.

“I was going to say ‘I outrank you,’” she admitted, “before I realised I’d already said that.”

Rogers’ expression turned grim. “And you’re tired. You didn’t sleep any longer than I did.”

“Still keeping an eye on me?”

“It seems someone has to.”

Maria stared, wondering if she’d misheard the note of restrained savagery in his reply.

“My God,” Isabelle laughed. “This is precious: unstoppable force meets immovable object.”

Akela made a noise like a snort as she sat up and started typing again. “Captain, if you hang around Maria for any length of time, you learn to pick your battles.”

Was it worrying that Maria had spent enough time around him to recognise the slight creasing of his brow as annoyance? Perhaps. She was more relieved that Akela was backing her up and Isabelle wasn’t getting involved. She wouldn’t have liked her chances against both of them _and_ Rogers.

The long breath he exhaled carried all the unwilling acceptance of the inevitable. Maria focused on the fact that it was acceptance and pushed the rest away. She had a job to do; his approval wasn’t part of it.

She turned to Akela. “What do you have for us on entry-points?”

* * *

Rogers stopped the Jeep a little way down the track, far enough into a clump of bushes that it wouldn’t be easily seen from the road.

“And I thought it was terrifying letting Hunter take the wheel,” Isabelle commented as she climbed out.

“You’re objecting to my driving style, Agent Hartley?” Once the mission had been decided – and supported by Isabelle and Aklea, Rogers seemed in better humour – although still not happy.

“No, just to driving those roads under blackout.”

“Supersoldier,” was all Maria said as she opened up the trunk of the car and started taking out their packs. “Comes with bonus night vision.”

“Oh, all the things I could say in response,” Izzy murmured with a grin that was no less wicked for being barely visible under the starlight.

They strapped on their packs, checked their weapons and their tac vests, and started off down the trail that led down towards the facility. It would be a hike of an hour or so – not ideal, but better than just driving right up to the gates.

_It might be abandoned,_ Akela told them. _All satellite indications suggest it. But if it’s still manned, you’ll be glad you went on stealth mode_.

By prior agreement, Steve took the lead.

_Best man for the job,_ had been Akela’s quip, and Maria had smiled, but less at the joke. How long had it been since she’d seen Akela like this? More than the five years since she’d gone missing – maybe not since Maria started doing primarily Operations Logistics instead of fieldwork.

_Sure you want to do this?_ Akela had asked after the planning was done, just before Maria went down for a few precious hours of sleep.

The only answer she had was, _I think we need to know.._

And not just for the supersoldier angle. There was something about that facility that had haunted her—

A hand reached out of the darkness to touch her shoulder. “Tripline,” Rogers said, his voice low and his grip warm. Maria looked ahead and could barely distinguish the line of the wire that ran zig-zag through the undergrowth.

Maria exhaled and told herself it was the adrenaline of nearly betraying themselves, not her body’s reaction to Rogers. “Okay, Just step carefully.”

They stepped carefully all the way to the edge of the open stretch to the facility, and surveyed the collection of buildings across the glow of the snow beneath the stars.

_...dark canyons and steaming breath..._

_No._

Maria blinked the vision away from her eyes and frowned at the shadows across the field.

Across the snowy expanse, the facility was dark, no light or sound or movement. And it was just past 0400 hours, yes, but Maria had never yet been at a scientific lab or testing facility of this type that didn’t have at least one light on at this hour.

“Amador, are we getting anything from the bird?”

“The Hummingbird isn’t reading anything. No power signatures, the grid is empty. They had secondary generators – until you blew them up the last time you were here.”

“And if they have _s_ _econdary_ secondary generators?”

Akela made a noise of amusement over the comms. “Then you’re in trouble. Incoming manifests show no sign of parts, though, and up until yesterday, there were no dips in power, to suggest another secondary power source had been set up. All readings show the facility to be dead.”

“Which means we’re going in,” Rogers said.

“He catches on fast, doesn’t he?” Izzy observed as she unslung her pack. “Good thing I brought the invisibility cloaks.”

The designer had called them ‘personal cloaking devices’, but, unfortunately for him, nobody was able to forbear from calling them invisibility cloaks, and after assorted grumblings from Ops Technics the name was grudgingly adopted. They weren’t as fluid as the cloaking devices for larger vehicles – helicarriers and Quinjets – largely due to the fact that the power source couldn’t provide that much power, and the swiftly shifting backgrounds as an individual moved across the landscape made it hard for the program to keep up.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was good for getting people across stretches of land where three moving dots would definitely be noticed, but three shifting patches that matched the background might get by.

Maria turned on her power source and noted the way the landscape blurred a little. Another reason the cloaking device wasn’t commonly used for close-quarter insertions. “Amador?”

“You’re clear, the facility’s clear, the airspace is clear – everything’s good. You’ve got a technical go.”

A glance over at the other two showed them watching her. “Still time to change your mind,” Rogers said.

“Why are you so set against us going in?”

“Why are you so set on going in?”

“I sure hope you two aren’t going to be like this all mission,” Izzy commented before Maria could answer. “Because I’m sure the banter worked for Hunter and Morse, but damn it got tiring being third wheel after a while.”

Maria gave her a glare. “This is _not_ —” She bit off her reply as Akela coughed pointedly in her ear. Or maybe it was a choked laugh. Either way, she was not going to have this out here and now. She fitted the infrared goggles over her eyes. “Let’s go.”

They left tracks in the snow – there wasn’t really any way to keep their tracks hidden – but with the facility empty and powered down, she figured there wouldn’t be any monitoring of the landscape – minimal at best. Why keep an eye on something that was no longer used?

_To see if someone comes to check it out after you’ve cleared it out._

She ignored the niggling matter of all the things that could so easily go wrong and focused on following Rogers’ through the snow.

It was a gorgeous landscape, even in the darkness, even at night. She hadn’t really noticed the last time she was there, and she certainly hadn’t been in a frame of mind to see.

_Dark rocks and crowds all around, the wind whistling around her ears as she ran—_

Cement under her boots, a little icy. She slid and rebalanced and took a moment to breathe. They’d reached the parking lot – scruffy weeds and treacherous patches of ground.

Rogers was looking in her direction. “You okay?”

“Fine.” Maria kept moving until they were up against one wall of the facility, making their way around to the ‘main’ entrance.

“Cameras are gone,” Rogers reported as they reached the door. “Nothing inside?”

“Silent night,” Akela said in their ears. “Hummingbird says you’re clear.”

To say it felt strange to enter the empty facility was an understatement. Rogers shouldered open the doors, but no gunfire greeted them, no yells. Izzy marked in high and Maria marked low, but the security station was empty. The corridors behind them were empty. The meeting rooms and the break rooms and the offices...

All empty and dark.

The slap of their footsteps echoed against the floor as they moved through, the sounds skittering away. There were no lights – not even the exit lights; the only illumination was from their torches.

Most of the early rooms were cleared and empty, only dust and light debris left behind.

“Maybe the sweepers will be able to make something out of it,” Izzy murmured, “but they were pretty thorough.”

“They took some big stuff, though.” Rogers gestured at the row of large, rusty holes in the floor, where bolts had once anchored heavy machines.

“A swipe-pass entry gate. Possibly with a metal detector or a full body scanner.” Izzy shook her head. “They took everything, _including_ what’s been nailed down. Creepy isn’t the word for it.”

Maria peered into the room just past the row of bolt holes – what had probably been a security station for the limited entry section. The computer screens there, the PA there, the weapons rack there... They’d been protecting something – or guarding something more than just captured S.H.I.E.L.D agents.

She peered down one of the corridors, trying to get her bearings—

“The agents we rescued were being held off down that way.” Rogers was gesturing along one of the passageways. “We didn’t really have time to explore—”

She started off down the cross-corridor, with the faint feeling—

“Hill?”

“There’s something…” She hoped he wouldn’t demand an explanation. At this moment, she wasn’t sure she had one that would make any sense. No, this was a pressure in her spine that pushed her forward – two cross-corridors, a door half-open, another corridor, then the exercise room, the medical station, and the—

She pulled up short, Rogers stopping a hair’s breadth behind her, his hand shooting out to grab the doorpost.

“What is it?”

It sat there, shadowy and terrifying. Dark green leather, and heavy – it had to be. The straps hung from it, threatening—

“You’d better have a damned good reason for running off, Hill.” Izzy’s voice rapped out. “Commander or no—”

Maria blinked. There was no chair, no straps hanging down like her doom. Just an empty space and the boltholes in the floor. She crossed to the window – one of the few that were unbarred – and stared out and down at the courtyard.

_No snow,_ she thought, staring down at the tree in full-flower. Beneath the canopy of puffy pink blooms _they’ll shed like confetti in the autumn breezes_ people’s legs were visible – _smokers taking a break—_ movement in the room behind her—

A hand on her arm jerked her back to the present, to the window with it’s wintry scene outside. Then she was pulled around to face Steve. “Hill.” His eyes raked her face. “You’re fugueing again.”

“I—” She hesitated, and then caught movement – she must have caught movement, because otherwise she wouldn’t have shoved— He staggered, off balance, but caught himself and her when she stumbled against him.

Glass shattered and Isabelle swore, but a moment later yelled, “I’m fine. What the hell—?”

Maria could see it in her head, the long thin barrel of the rifle, the scope with its crosshairs, the line of sight down to the window— She dragged in a breath that smelled of mesh weave and male scent and fought back a wave of dizziness. “Stay back!” But when she tried to move past Rogers, he blocked her.

“If he’s still out there—”

“Wait.” When his grip didn’t ease, she pushed. “Rogers.” He let her go and she eased past him, paused, still out of sight of the shooter, and then spun past the window using Rogers as a springboard. She got two shots off before she was past the opening. The next bullet twisted the window frame on its way into the cupboard. _Off-target – enough time_ —

“Exit stage left,” she told Isabelle, who sprinted for the door and slammed through ahead of Maria.

Rogers used the doorjamb as a pivot and then they were heading back the way they came.

Except that wasn’t—

“Left and down the stairs,” she told Izzy, who shot a confused glance over her shoulder but did as Maria said.

“Hill?”

“They left someone to deal with us,” she informed Akela. “A shooter, sitting high. Got a diversion?”

“I think I can scramble something. And you’ve got company – at least ten, no, twenty converging. Tagging and flagging.”

Along the corridor, down the fire stairs three floors, then back out into the floor, through two rooms, and a service accessway that led below ground…

“I know you have ridiculous volumes of stuff in that head of yours,” Izzy panted as they ran corridors, “But this? Is nuts.”

Rogers was more tactful. “We’ll be targets once we get above ground.”

“I know.” But they still had their cloaks, and Akela had promised to rustle up a diversion before she cut the comms, and Maria was pretty sure whoever was hunting them wouldn’t be expecting the wild goose chase she was about to lead them on.

“You’re kidding, right?” Izzy stared at the tumble of bricks and cement ahead of them.

“I don’t kid,” Maria reminded her as she started climbing over the heaped rubble, her arms out for balance, her night goggles showing her where the rubble might take her weight. Behind her, the other two followed, Izzy more gingerly than Rogers, until they were down on the dusty floor, picking their way out towards the door that still hung open. “They’ll be expecting us to leave the way we came,” she said as she started up the stairs. “So we won’t.”

There was a small risk – if the sniper was still up there. But if he was, he wouldn’t be expecting them down here…

Maria paused as a distant whine hummed through the air. And smiled.

Rogers’ face lifted to the sky. “She brought the Quinjet?”

“That’s a helluva diversion, but I’m not arguing.” Izzy pulled her cloak on. “Head for the treeline while they’re distracted?”

They moved up the stairs and through the garage as the firing began – multiple weapons, Maria thought, multiple sources. And Akela wouldn’t be rated for the most recent crop of Quinjets anymore, although she was doing pretty well at flying it.

In the garage, the doors were still battered and half-rolled up; facility maintenance obviously hadn’t bothered fixing them.

They slipped out under the edge after Rogers took in the open space ahead, then stepped out into the darkness. The soft crunch of snow beneath their boots was the only sign of their passing, and that was inaudible over the chatter of guns and the Quinjet’s firing reply.

The pop-whoosh of a rocket launcher, but the Quinjet pilot was better than that; a sleek barrel roll up, into the air – a swift and skilled manoeuvre, and not one by a woman with questionable vision in one eye.

“No way that’s Amador,” Izzy said.

Their earpieces buzzed. “Always the note of surprise,” said Akela, amusement in her voice. “Even though you’re right.”

“Heard you needed a lift,” came the lazy drawl over their earpieces. Maria bit back a grin at Barton’s jaunty tones. “Happened I was in the neighbourhood.”

_Riga,_ Maria remembered. “Quad 4C pickup.”

“Gotcha. Laying down cover.”

They sprinted for the treeline as the Quinjet opened fire, the cloaks hiding their passing under cover of darkness and gunfire.

There was a hole in the fence, but Rogers didn’t make for it. Maria frowned, but realised that any snipers would be watching that space for movement. As Rogers reached the fence, he turned to face Izzy, and gave her a boost over. She tucked and rolled, neat as pie. Then groaned as she came up and grabbed for the cloak. “Jesus, Rogers, did you have to throw so hard? Kids these days – we’re not all limber young thangs.”

“Couldn’t prove it by you,” was Rogers’ retort through the fence as Maria jogged the last few yards. “Ready?”

In answer, Maria put her hand on her shoulder, about to put her boot in the stirrup he’d made of his hands—

Then shoved him over, into the snow, falling down, heard the dull whack of bullets hitting the ground beyond them. Rogers was already rolling her underneath him – that damned heroic instinct. Maria managed to get her face clear of his arm. “Izzy, Quad 4C, we’ll meet you—”

Barton’s crossfire – heavier, higher. Targeting the sniper who was targeting them— Maria had a moment to breathe, met Rogers’ gaze. “Ready.”

Then they were up – or he was up, and she was hustled along with him. Their cloaks were dragged along behind them, no longer being used as cover as they sprinted for the hole in the fence. No subterfuge now; get out while Barton held them down—

_Down and up, up and down._ Two points marking the shortest distance between a ball of fire— She was shouting before she realised. “Barton! Evade _down!_ ”

“Copy that.”

Maria heard the pop of an RPG, and her vision swam.

_…snow off the mountains, the sharp stringency of pines – it was always rocks and snow and forest out here, God, sometimes he missed the city. And the drop was huge – he had to be kidding – but, no, this was the mission, and their game-changer might be on that train…_

_Pain. Near-unbearable pain, but he was alive. Alive and conscious and— Needles in him, again, a slow fire burning in his veins. Panic, cold and clutching. He’d never told anyone about the blackouts – they weren’t really blackouts, after all. He just…didn’t remember what he’d done, although he was perfectly functional—_

Maria blinked and they were in the forest, weaving in and out of the trees—Rogers’ hand guiding-propelling her along, but—

She dragged at his arm, changing their momentum so they swung up against a tree, out of the line of fire that stitched along the trajectory they’d been taken. Then hissed as he fetched hard up against her, legs, belly, chest, and chin. A big, warm weight pressing her back against the bole of the tree. His hands caught her shoulders, fingers flexing against her arms. Their breaths tangled together, warm whuffs, mouths mere inches apart.

The drum of her heartbeat was like thunder in her chest, an adrenaline rush of danger, of attraction, of sudden, vicious _want_.

Did she press forward or did he?

Did it matter?

Mouths brushed, tentative, almost surprised. Then he leaned in, just a fraction, heat and eagerness, her lips parted and she tilted her head to the side, better access, open invitation, _sweetness_ —

Her left hand touched his sidearm, and he pulled back in shock as she freed it from the holster.

Maria was a little shocked herself. It seemed her instincts were still on the mission, even if her adrenalised body had decided to jump Captain America’s bones.

She lifted it, leaned sideways so she could see past him, aimed, and started firing. Her shots tracked back the way the gunfire had come, fierce and steady – and yes, blind. But Isabelle would be heading for the pickup point and Rogers was here—

Her thigh twinged. She slapped her hand down on her leg and sucked in a breath.

“Are you hit?” He stepped back, but his hands stayed on her shoulders.

“I think—” But when she lifted her hand, there wasn’t blood, wound, or pain. A phantom injury, imagined rather than real. She took a sharp breath, as the whine of the Quinjet increased. “Pickup.”

She imagined rather than saw his frown. But he only glanced around at the shadows, before nodding. “Let’s go.”

They reached the designated clearing just as the Quinjet spun around to hover with the ramp just resting on the ground. Isabelle was already there, one hand on her hip, looking amused.

“I thought you might be lost in the woods and gone for good.”

“No such luck,” Maria told her as they strode up the ramp. “Clear to lift.”

“Lifting,” came the reply back from the cockpit.

She wobbled a little as the Quinjet rose, but shook her head when Rogers stepped towards her. “I’m fine.”

He looked like he wanted to dispute this, but Maria didn’t give him the chance. She walked past, heading for the cockpit and Barton. “Thanks for the taxi service.”

“I got the call; I answered.” He glanced over at her, even as they flew over fields and hills that had taken three hours to drive. “I see you’re developing a knack for trouble.”

“Working on it. Are you headed back to DC?”

“No. Deep cover in Bratislava. You’ll have to hit Thorpe up for the ride home. Or just hit on him.”

Her hand twitched, but she resisted the urge to touch her mouth or look back into the hold, where she could hear Rogers and Isabelle conversing. “Thorpe authorised you?”

Barton’s grin was broad. “Hill, he’s got the home fires lit.”

“Do I want to know why?”

“Just off-hand, I’d say it‘s the same reason as always. You have a habit of putting your head in the lion’s mouth, Hill. It’s hard on a guy.”

“It’s not his business.”

“He cares,” was the reply. “That makes it his business.”

Maria shook her head in exasperation – and buried the niggle of anger deep. If Alan had dug—But, no, even a Regional Director of Operations shouldn’t be able to access the medical files of the Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D – then again, that had never stopped him before. He might suspect, but he couldn’t _know_. Maybe she was just reading too much into it. The Regional Director of Operations would be accorded the information that there was a team operating in his area, even if it wasn’t connected with any other missions.

The fact that it was _Alan_ , though… God knew Fury wouldn’t hesitate to set watchdogs on Maria – after all, wasn’t that why he’d assigned Rogers—?

Her hand closed into a fist to keep from touching her mouth. But if she concentrated, she could still feel the softness of his mouth – the way he’d leaned in, light and easy, but with the undercurrent threatening to sweep her away—

Maria swallowed. This was going to be awkward. Adrenaline did the damnedest things to the brain and the body.

Beneath them, the fields were slowing, the Quinjet easing back on the acceleration as they reached the farmhouse. Barton circled the farmhouse. “And this stop is S.H.I.E.L.D Safehouse. Please keep all body parts inside until the Quinjet has come to a complete stop, and remember to take all your equipment with you, because you won’t be getting it back otherwise.”

“Thanks for the save, Barton,” Izzy called. “Give Adela my love.”

Barton snorts. “Adela says your love is a dangerous thing, Hartley, and she hopes you get stuck working with Filtzin.”

Maria stepped aside as Rogers came up. Their eyes met for just a moment, and she held his gaze coolly before taking a step past him—

_\--a hand gripped her arm hard, dragging her aside out of—a room? Full of people? She yanked away – or tried to. He was strong – strong enough to pull her with him, long strides stirring up the dust as they moved through the canyons. “You shouldn’t be here. If you’re here, then they’re close—”_

_“Who’s close?” When pulling away gained her nothing, she tried to keep up, trying to see his face. Short hair, dark, cropped – a clean-cut jaw, but unfamiliar from this angle. “Who are you?”_

_“They needed a matrix – an anchor to stabilise. And now that they’ve got you—”_

_Ahead of them, the canyons dropped away, leaving nothing but stars. “ **You’ve** got me,” Maria pointed out, then realised that they weren’t going to stop at the edge. “What--? Wait--!”_

_But he hauled her up, fighting her off without effort as she turned on him, her punches deflected, her kicks sidestepped, and the grip on her arm unrelenting as he stopped at the precipice and tossed her off into nothing—_

She was floating under hazy lights, a golden glow bobbing above her as the world turned ever so slowly…

“Very _Gone With The Wind,_ ” a familiar voice was saying drolly. _Alan_.

“Call me ‘Mammy’ and I’ll punch your lights out.” That was Akela.

A resonant murmur from beside her. “Which room?” The line of a firm jaw above her. Strong arms carrying her up the stairs like a goddamned damsel…

She jerked, then tensed as his grip tightened around her. “Lie still,” he said and his voice was short and sharp.

“What—”

“You fainted.”

“I don’t faint.”

“Loss of consciousness,” said Izzy from further down the stairs. “Equals faint.”

“Fury should never have allowed you on this mission in the first place,” Rogers muttered.

Alan made a noise like a snort as they reached the second floor. “Knowing Maria, she just threatened to take personal leave, a commercial flight, and hitchhike in.”

She felt Rogers’ tense. But all he asked was, “Which room?”

“To your left,” Alan said. “There’s a sitting room large enough to hold everyone for the debriefing she’s not going to let us evade.”

“She should be resting.”

“Yes, and good luck with that.”

There was a small kerfuffle when Rogers tried to set her down on the couch. “My feet still work,” she said acidly, and was eased down a long, hard body so she was standing on the floor. And her feet still worked, but her legs were a little wobbly. “And yes, debriefing now. Because there was something in there.”

Izzy took a seat on the end of Maria’s lounge, her jacket open, her pose casual. Once again, she looked like she was going to enjoy the show that followed, and Maria gave her a narrow-eyed glare, which was answered by a swift smirk. Akela brought her laptop in and set it up on the coffee table, then folded her legs in under her. She lifted one dark brow at Maria. _All good?_ Maria nodded, very slightly, and received the slightest lift of the shoulder in return. _If you say so._

“I saw the tail end of the mission it from the Hummingbird’s cams,” Alan said, sitting on the arm of a sofa., “Pretty much from the security section. And Amador gave me the update on this mission and why. You stretched the parameters pretty significantly.”

“The facility was evacuated.”

“But not empty,” Izzy noted. “They were waiting for us – they knew someone would come looking. How’d they know?”

Akela looked at Maria, a question in her expression. She shook her head, ever so slightly. “The S.H.I.E.L.D agents we retrieved had no signs that they’d been suborned. All of them are still under surveillance, and none of them knew about this mission.”

“Which begs the question of why didn’t they use the S.H.I.E.L.D agents as test subjects?” Alan lifted one shoulder. “Sorry, Amador.”

“It’s a valid question.” Akela folded her hands in her lap – so nobody could see them shake, Maria suspected – but her voice was steady. “I’d say they didn’t want to risk having a bunch of superpowered S.H.I.E.L.D agents running around with questionable loyalties. Because I was kept in line by the threat of death; but a supersoldier would be a law unto himself.”

“I’ll vouch for that.” Rogers looked over at her, hesitated, then continued. “There was a room in that facility; looked like a lot of equipment had been taken out, but the dust and bolts on the floor... Erskine’s device to inject me with the serum looked like that – the same configuration. Does S.H.I.E.L.D have anything on what happened to Stark’s equipment after the SSR shut down? Howard Stark,” he qualified.

Maria went cold. “It would have been Stark Industries proprietary technology, so Stark industries probably has it in a vault somewhere.”

“I’d like to be sure of that.”

Akela was already typing a search query in for data on Stark Industries vaults and Howard Stark’s work.

“A lot of people worked on that project and there was at least one traitor.” Steve was grim. “Erskine’s killer. Why not more?”

“But the people who worked on Erskine’s project…they ended up in the SSR,” Izzy objected. “In S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Or in independent think-tanks,” Maria pointed out. “Not everything was S.H.I.E.L.D in those days.”

“Not everything’s S.H.I.E.L.D in these,” Alan added.

“Well, the equipment from the Captain America project was cannibalised for various other Stark Industries proojects,” Akela reported. “Mostly weapons development and manufacture.”

“Someone remembered, though.”

“Maybe.” Maria glanced over at Rogers. “Or someone had the same ideas in parallel. It happens. But that can be looked at later. Right now, I want a clean-up unit going through that facility with a fine-tooth comb—Alan—”

He sat back and folded his arms over his chest. “You’re lucky I’ve got more than just Barton up my sleeve. And that I knew you’d be asking for a sweeper team. They’ll be here by the start of day, and the only question is whether you want the results shipped to DC or analysed in the European labs?”

“Here.” Yes, she’d have less access to it, but there was too much happening in DC right now – not only Insight, but also the whole situation with the _Lemurrian Star_. “And remind me about codes later.”

“Later,” Rogers said pointedly, “being after you’ve rested. Are we finished here?”

“No,” Maria began.

“I think we can put the rest of it off,” Izzy commented. “Most of it will go in the report, but I’ve got a few questions for Maria. However, I’d rather wait for the answers than face the wrath of Cap. And even if all you young ‘uns are ready to be up and at ‘em, I’m old and need a nanna nap.”

Alan’s snort was sharp. “Now why do I have such trouble imagining you old and decrepit, Isabelle?”

“My mum would say it was because I was born to die young,” Izzy said, standing and stretching. “But maybe you just lack imagination, Alan.”

“Ouch.” Alan grinned as he stood and looked to Maria. “I’ll check in with the sweeper team, but I’ll be back before you go down.”

Akela was packing up her laptop, and only gave Maria a look. “I’ve got a program in place to track the moving trucks they used. I don’t think it’ll turn up anything, but we can hope. And then I want a nanna nap. Freedom is exhausting.”

Rogers hung behind as the others left, only standing up to close the door behind Akela. Then he turned to face her. “You had another fugue out there – when we were in the facility. You moved like you knew where you were going.”

“Lucky guess?”

“You’re not that lucky. You also—on the way out. When the second rocket launcher fired, you told Barton to evade _down_.”

“And?”

His eyes were steady on her face. “They had a second launcher aimed just above the first. If Barton had evaded _up_ , the way he did the first time—”

“What do you want me to say?” Maria felt irritated, put on the spot. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, especially not from Steve Rogers. “I don’t know why I knew the facility’s layout so well. I don’t remember why I told Barton to evade down instead of up. It was just...a hunch.”

“A hunch,” Rogers looked bemused. “That would seem...”

“Far-fetched?”

His lips quirked. “Well, I was thinking ‘uncharacteristic’.”

Discomfort made her sharp and unthinking, “I guess uncharacteristic is the theme of the day, then.”

Rogers blinked, and his expression shifted, his eyes dropping to her mouth before his lashes lifted, showing a clear blue gaze without remorse or regret in them. Did he expect her to say something? Maria stared back, careful to show no encouragement in her expression. She didn’t dare. He was Captain America, Avenger, and hero, and he wasn’t for her. She had a career and a reputation, and a reckless, adrenalised moment while on a mission didn’t change that – even if it had made her head spin.

Her cheeks heated as his eyes roamed across her face, looking for—what? Maria didn’t know; couldn’t imagine.

Whatever it was, he didn’t find it. Instead, he nodded, more to himself than to her. “Okay.” A sigh assayed out of him, brief and concluding. When he spoke again, he was brisk and distant; the super-soldier who’d joined the mission. “You know I’ll report the faint to Fury.”

“You, Hartley, Amador, Alan...” Maria shrugged. “I was already on probation after they found out about last time – no thanks to you. Now I’m grounded.”

“And if you’d blacked out on a mission when there wasn’t someone to catch you?”

“Then there would have been hell to pay.” She grimaced. “It was my judgement call, Captain.”

“A bad one.”

“Yes.” Maria didn’t like it, but she wasn’t going to shirk the responsibility.

Rogers stared at her for a long, uncomfortable moment. “And you wonder why you need a keeper?” Then his lips pressed together. “I’ll see you back in DC, commander.” He stalked to the door, radiating anger like a force field. Because she’d risked the mission on a hunch? Because she wasn’t going to fall at his feet after the kiss?

He pulled the door open and checked. Then strode out, murmuring something Maria didn’t hear.

She heard the drawling cadences of the reply, though, easy and amused. A moment later, Alan walked in. “I think he’s angry with you.”

“Whatever gave you that impression?”

“Well, I’m intimately familiar with the feeling. You make it damned hard to care about you, Maria.” He turned to pull the door closed behind him.

“Ever considered that it’s deliberate?”

“Oh, I know it is.” Alan strolled in and sat down on the couch. “You look like hell, darling.”

She glared at him for the endearment, however mocking. “The sweep team?”

“They’ll be in by dawn, done by midday if they don’t find any surprises. And I can probably squeeze you into one of the labs at Trauma Zentrum, although I wouldn’t count on having the results back anytime before Christmas. Everything’s flat out right now what with most of our personnel still working up the DNA coding for Insight.”

Maria grimaced. “Don’t even talk to me about Insight.”

“A solution for the modern world.”

“And it doesn’t bother you that we’re playing judge, jury, and executioner all in one?”

“Better us than someone else.” Alan tilted his head at her and grinned. “Are we going to fight about this?”

“No.”

“Damn.” As she arched a brow at him, the grin turned distinctly wicked. “You used to enjoy the making up part.”

“You mean _you_ enjoyed the making up part.”

“I flatter myself that the enjoyment was mutual.”

“Yes, you do.”

Alan shook his head. “So fair and yet so cruel. Well, that makes my next delivery easier. Doc Russo wants a word with you. Probably an encyclopaedia’s worth of them. He wasn’t happy you’d run off to try to kill yourself faster.” He tilted his head and tutted. “You forgot that there was someone else who’d get annoyed if you got yourself killed or injured?”

Abruptly, Maria recalled the message on her desk.

_Dr. Russo is looking for you, but presumes you won’t drop dead in the next forty-eight hours._

“I have way too many of those, lately.”

“Well,” said Alan dryly, “maybe you should start considering _why_.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Medical handwave of doom in this chapter. Srsly.

“We should just declare you an Avenger and be done with it,” Doc Russo grumbled when Maria met him at the bunker. “You certainly seem to throw yourself headlong into danger.”

“I didn’t pick the Vilnius mission,” Maria reminded him as she sat down in the patient’s chair.

“No, but you went back. And you leaped into the middle of that barfight in New York – the one where you offered yourself up as a hostage in place of Dr. Foster and got shot with an unknown compound.”

“That was nine months ago.”

“Yes, and it was the last time you had anything close to a full medical.” Russo started pecking at the keyboard, continuing to talk as he did. “You’re supposed to have one every six months, Hill.”

“Life got busy.”

“It does that. Unfortunately, your busy life means we have no data about what happened to you between then,” he pulled the screen around, “and now.”

The charts and scans had been shrunk and replicated on each side of the screen, but the change was very visible. Hormone levels, biochemical chromatography, testing values, and the bevy of other tests that Maria had undergone after she’d been tattled on, first by Rogers, then by Melinda. And halfway down the screen, the MRI taken by Agent Simmons shifted back and forth, showing the bright flame of whatever was taking place in her brain.

“If we’d had an interim set of tests, we might not be in this position now – with you off the active roster and desk bound.”

She studied the charts for a moment longer, ignoring the criticism. “So do you know what it means?”

“I have an inkling. It was actually young Agent Simmons who put me on the track – specifically in her work with Mike Petersen and the injections the Centipede program was giving their soldiers.” Russo clicked on one of the charts, enlarging it on the screen. “This is you,” he told Maria, pointing to the scatter of dots from the first chart, coloured in blue. “More specifically, your current chemical state for a group of compounds known as phenyl-amylates. Note the two outliers, and the scatter of the points between them. Now,” he said, opening up a dialogue box and clicking on two files, “look at these.”

The points were scattered in similar configurations, but the points were all higher - the blue one was nearly double, if Maria was reading the axis values correctly.

“Who are they?”

“The orange sequence is Mike Petersen – the only test subject we have left from Centipede’s initial batch of volatile soldiers. It more or less matches the sequencing we’ve found in the test subjects from AIM – the soldiers, since Stark won’t let us near Ms. Potts.”

“Not entirely surprising. Who’s the other?

“Steve Rogers.” Maria glanced at him, startled. Russo tilted his head. “You see where this is going?”

“Yes.” And she didn’t like it. “What’s the purpose of the phenyl-amylate family?”

“They’re biochemical stabilisers. Because the human body is in a relatively stable biochemical state. Oh, there are upsets, of course – that’s why we have a raft of medication for the various biochemical and hormonal imbalances – but as a general rule, there are things the human body is capable of doing, and things it’s not. Biotypical is what we’re calling it.”

“What does this graph look like in a biotypical?”

Russo opened another file – white dots skating along the bottom axis of the graph. “Those are the median values for all S.H.I.E.L.D personnel in the last six months. You’re no longer biotypical, Commander Hill. And the question that’s in my mind – and Fury’s for that matter – is _why_.”

“The bar in New York.”

“The bar in New York. Where our sweeper teams found a tranq gun in the wreckage.”

_She faked a stumble, bumped her hip on the table, felt a sting in her throat and reached up. Her legs wouldn’t support her—_

Maria grimaced. “I got the medical work-up.”

“Yes, and while your medical workups show no sign of any changes immediately afterwards, that seems to have been the jumping off point for whatever it is that’s happening to you now.”

“They were after Doctor Foster, I just happened to be in the way. And they had a plan for getting her out.”

“A steel coffin in an ambulance.” Russo noted. “I read your report. It suggests they were expecting whatever was in the shot to be fast and rough.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“For you.” Russo sat back in his chair and regarded her over his glasses. “I did the readings on the clinics Coulson’s prodigy found. ‘Better living through chemistry’ indeed. One of the complications appears to have been in tailoring the dosage for the individual. The failures? Agent Simmons thinks they were bio-atypical to begin with, and whatever the serum, injection, medication, what-have-you did threw them further out of whack. Physiological imbalance exacerbates mental imbalance and we have everything from psychosis to suicidal depression.”

“But Rogers wasn’t exactly biotypical when he took the serum. And that doesn’t explain Banner.”

“Does anything explain Banner?” Russo shrugged. “And Erskine’s serum was an entirely different thing – amping everything up to eleven? Impractical. Although impressive given what the man had to work with at the time.”

Maria cut off the thought that ‘impressive’ was what had resulted. That wasn’t relevant here. “But shooting up an astrophysicist to create a supersoldier is impractical. Unless we count the ties with Thor...”

“Maybe. But this isn’t about Foster anyore, Hill, this is about you and your medical condition.”

And this was the part she’d been avoiding so far. She’d pushed too far, made the wrong call, and she was in trouble. She looked Russo in the eye, ready to take it on the chin. “Am I grounded?”

“More or less. Rather more than less. You’ll track when you have your blackouts and the nature of them. Anything unusual you think, feel, or hallucinate, you note it down and bring it to me at the bi-weekly check-ins. And you won’t be going into the field for at least six weeks – certainly not until we’re reasonably sure that you’re not going to black out again.”

“So it’s like I had an epileptic seizure.”

“Yes. And I’m just about to run you through the range of tests we give enhanced personnel to test them. Strength, speed, intelligence. I know,” he held up a hand when she opened her mouth to protest. “There’s been no sign of any changes in you, but we’re going to be sure of that. So get your kit out and we’ll start taking a look at what’s happening to you.”

* * *

_Nothing, nothing, nothing, and a big fat nothing_ , Maria concluded two weeks later as she closed the laptop on Doc Russo’s summary and leaned back in the seat to watch the streets of the suburbs go by.

In the front seat, the driver – a recent graduate from S.H.I.E.L.D Operations - glanced in the rearview mirror to check on her passenger, but didn’t ask if Maria was okay. Maria appreciated the discretion – the last graduate Fury had assigned her had insisted on conversation even when Maria had asked for silence, interjecting questions, constantly checking up on her when she made any kind of noise, and giving off the distinct impression that she was being observed.

 _If you’re going to set someone on me,_ she’d told Fury, _At least make it someone who isn’t going to play twenty questions every time I climb into the car._

As it was, she was answering enough questions for other people. Apart from Gina, there was Fury and Russo, Akela had checked in twice, and Izzy once. And Alan had dropped her a text last week to say that the labs in Zurich were working through the things they’d found in Vilnius and were due to have the results back sometime this week, and since he hadn’t heard of her dropping dead in DC, he presumed she was okay.

She’d heard nothing from Rogers apart from the brief mail in her inbox when she returned to DC.

_Gone south. Try not to get yourself killed, commander._

Maria considered that height of irony, coming from him.

Not that she was given any opportunity to get herself killed; having been taken off active duty, she’d been riding a desk the last month, and not even allowed to drive herself home at the end of the day – witness Fury assigning her a driver. The advantage was that the drive gave her an extra hour and a half of working time, _and_ she got home at a relatively reasonable hour, instead of close to midnight. Although getting home at a reasonable hour then required more complicated matters such as what to have for dinner.

Tonight? Tonight was probably Chinese. And if she was going to pick it up on the way home, she’d better ask the driver to—

Her phone rang. _Alan_.

She didn’t bother with a greeting. “Are the lab results in?”

“What did Doc Russo have to say today?”

“I asked first.”

He huffed, but it was mock-annoyance. “Yes, the labs have finished processing the results from Vilnius, and they’re in the system. And yes, I’ve tagged Russo, so he’ll be able to look at them tomorrow. How was today?”

Today, there’d been a call from Melinda – brief, as they always were over the encrypted lines. Technically, Melinda wasn’t supposed to be calling Maria at all.

“ _Heard you had issues in the field._ ”

“ _Yes._ ” Maria didn’t elaborate. “ _How’s Phil?_ ”

“ _On the warpath._ ”

“ _He wants to know what happened to him._ ”

“ _And he’s not going to take Fury’s vanishing acts quietly for too much longer._ ”

And Fury had been in and out of the offices lately; here, there, and everywhere from what Maria could tell. She’d half-expected to bump into him coming out here – the bunker was old, at least fifteen years, and it looked like it had once been fitted for labs. But beyond that, there were no records of what had been here.

Not unlike Vilnius, in fact.

“No changes since the last check, and nothing new on any front.” Maria glanced out the window as the car stopped outside the gates of her apartment complex. Saw the figure waiting. Paused. “Alan, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Given the direct cut. Again.” He mock-sighed. “I’ll call you tomorrow about the hunt for the Vilnius evacuation.”

Maria hung up, put away the phone, and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “I’ll be fine from here.”

Judging by the expression on the young woman’s face, she had a thousand questions bubbling up inside her, but all she asked was, “Do I log this, commander?”

“You drove me home, you dropped me at the gates. That’s sufficient logging, Agent Haddon.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She took her time collecting her purse and her jacket, before climbing out of the car and crossing the road to the visitor space where Rogers had parked his bike and was leaning against it, tucking his phone into his jacket pocket.

“I could make the case that this constitutes stalking, Captain.”

“If you ask me to go, I will,” he said simply. “But I was going to check in with you at the Triskelion anyway, and when I saw you’d left... I was wondering if you’d had dinner yet.”

Maria regarded him for a long moment, weighing up her options – and whether they were wise. Coffee at work was one thing, this was a different level of personal, and for the Deputy Director to be seen hobnobbing with Captain America...

Her stomach grumbled, and she winced as he cracked a smile.

Betrayed by her body; story of her year.

“How do you feel about Chinese?”

The restaurant was small and dinky, but the food was good and the owners knew Maria. The teenaged daughter who sometimes worked tables stared at Rogers when she realised who was under the baseball cap, but still managed to elbow Maria as she went by with their drinks order. “Nice boyfriend!”

Maria bit back the response which was decidedly adolescent and glared at the menu as though it had offended her.

“Anyone would think you’re ashamed to be seen with me,” Rogers said mildly.

“I want a quiet dinner, and I’d rather not be inundated with supergroupies because someone got excited on social media.”

“Supergroupies?”

Maria gave him a look. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean.”

“I’m not. I’ve just never heard it put like that before.” He shrugged and looked at the menu. “Any recommendations?”

“I usually get the beef and black bean. How are you with chilli?”

His expression went cautious. “How chilli are we talking?”

“Not very. Just a touch of spice. Because these vegetables are pretty good.”

They settled on three dishes, plus plain rice. The teenaged server came with their drinks and took their order, and Maria noted she’d patted her hair into place and fixed her make-up.

“Do I want to know why you’re smiling?” Rogers asked when Donna had gone.

Maria sipped her Coke Zero. “No.”

“No more faints?”

“No.”

“How are the medical check-ins going?”

“They’re going.” And if he thought she was going to discuss those results with him, let alone in public... “How was the south?”

“Warm. Not what I expected.”

“It’s not all _Gone With The Wind._ ” His expression shifted, and she frowned. “What?”

“Nothing.” He looked down at the table, giving the lie, and Maria suddenly remembered that Alan had made the comment about _Gone With The Wind_ in the safehouse. Coupled with the ‘boyfriend’ remark...

Yeah, this had been a bad idea all around, but it was too late to back out.

“Tell me about where you went.” When he glanced up, surprised, she explained, “We’re here, it’s not going to get any more comfortable sitting around staring at the table like it’s a first date, so you might as well talk. And rather than discuss matters that require security clearance the people in here don’t have, you can tell me about your trip.”

Rogers stared at her for a moment, then smiled, a little ruefully. “It was...interesting. The last time I travelled around America was with the USO.”

“Things have changed.”

“More than I expected. Oh, not the technology and the style. That’s...I didn’t know what to expect there, but it was the people.” When she waited, he said, “I stopped to help a guy with his truck in North Carolina – couldn’t help much, but we chatted for a while as he did repairs. He was hoping to get back to see his daughter before she died. Treatable cancer, but her husband had been laid off, and their health plan had gone with it, so they weren’t able to access the treatments. He was frustrated by everything – angry about the government trying to control him, and the doctors charging so much, about the illegals making everything more expensive and taking up services that could have been used to save his family...”

“Sounds common enough,” Maria said when he didn’t continue.

“Not back home.” Blue eyes met hers, held them. “Yes, we were in the middle of the war, and the Depression was still lingering in everyone’s minds, but there was still as sense of...purpose. Roosevelt had the New Deal working, and life wasn’t great, but we were doing _something_. There was hope. Now – this time – it felt…despairing. Like people thought there was nothing they could do.”

“Maybe there isn’t.” Maria considered how much to say, and whether he could even understand – the boy from Brooklyn with the indomitable spirit. “Most people have little power – political, financial, social – barely any control over their lives. So they cling to what gives them the feeling of control – however illusory – or they get angry, or apathetic. Before you took the serum, how did it feel to see all the wrongs in the world and not be able to do anything about them?”

“I could fight.”

“And lose.”

“I wasn’t fighting to win,” he pointed out. “I was fighting to defend what was right.”

Maria stared at him for a long moment, working her way through that statement, starting to realise just how different this man was. You didn’t go into a fight unless you could win, right? Just fighting because it was the right thing to do...that was crazy talk. And yet, wasn’t that the heart of Steve Rogers – to stand up for what was right, even if it ended badly?

And perhaps it was a little humbling to realise, some ten months after she’d first met him, that _this_ was why Dr. Erskine had chosen him for the serum.

Rogers was looking back at her, his expression questioning her silence. Then his eyes slid past her. A moment later, Donna was standing there with a tray with two bowls in it, and her dad had come out from behind the register to set the bowls down in front of them.

“On the house,” he told them, with a sideways glance at Steve. “We give it to Maria anyway – she a good customer, even if she has boring taste. But also thanks.” He patted Steve on the shoulder, and gave him a quick nod, man to man, then headed back to the kitchen, trailed by Donna.

“It’s a starter soup,” she told him as he poked the spoon through the cloudy soup. “Bone broth with a few vegies boiled in it, mostly. You can leave it if you’re worried about what’s in it.”

Rogers gave her an amused look. “I grew up in the Depression. And this smells delicious and I’m hungry.”

It was delicious, although small, and the kitchen was keeping an eye on them, because the instant Steve set down his spoon, Donna and her father were there to clear the dishes and put the main plates down, along with the plain rice.

“You need a fork?” Mr. Lam asked Steve.

“No, I’m good. But thank you.”

Mr. Lam took the tray from his daughter and they left, although not before Donna caught Maria’s eye and made a fanning motion at her face with one hand. Thankfully behind Rogers’ shoulder, so he couldn’t see.

“This isn’t usual in Chinese restaurants, is it?”

“No.” Maria shrugged. “But I’m a regular, and I’ve gotten to know them a little. Help yourself.”

Rogers gave her a look, and then took her bowl, filling it with rice before he started to serve her from the dishes. Maria put her hand over the bowl to stop him. “Help. Yourself.”

He met her gaze and lifted the spoon, full of black bean beef. Maria rolled her eyes and let him put the beef in her bowl, then picked it up so he couldn’t try to serve her anything else. He was the supersoldier, he needed the food more than she did.

She squashed the little voice that pointed out that, according to her biochemistry, she was tending towards supersoldierness herself. There were no other indicators present – no changes in her metabolism, no physiological change. Her strength, speed, stamina read in the same ranges they’d always read. Whatever had been injected into her, it had done nothing for her.

But she wasn’t going to think about that right now.

“Maria.” She glanced up, startled by the use of her name, but Rogers only indicated the food. “Eat.”

With a roll of her eyes, she started serving herself. “Yes, _sir_.”

“And don’t give me sass.”

“Oh, I’m not giving _sass_. I’m just naturally this charming.”

His grin was brief and terrifying in that it bottomed out her stomach in ways that had nothing to do with food. And Maria hastily applied herself to the meal, before she did anything as gauche as blush at Steve Rogers.

Yeah, dinner had been a bad idea. Although the food itself? Maria had no problem.

Mrs. Lam came up alongside them. “All good? Haven’t seen you for a while,” she patted Maria on the shoulder. “Busy, busy, busy. And now I see why.”

Maria rolled her eyes at Rogers. “Just a work colleague and friend.”

“That’s what they all say these days.” Mrs. Lam grinned at Rogers, who looked like he wasn’t quite sure what to say or do. Maria wondered how he managed it with Natasha. “How’s the food?”

“It’s delicious. Really good.”

“But you haven’t even finished it all.” She waited until he’d opened his mouth and then patted him on the shoulder. “Joking. You take it home; good leftovers. You eat leftovers?”

“Yes, ma’am, I sure do.”

“Good. So, you finished, or you going to pick a bit longer?”

Maria met his gaze, shrugged. “Pack it up. He’ll take it.”

“Okay.” Mrs. Lam signalled to her daughter to come and clear the dishes and bustled off.

“So,” Rogers leaned forward, smiling. “I guess you don’t usually bring guys here?”

“It can’t be the first time you’ve gotten the boyfriend line,” Maria said, thinking of a few of the rumours she’d heard around the place. “I know Romanoff takes you places.”

“There isn’t anything between us.”

“I’m not saying there is. And there aren’t any rules against fraternisation – not in S.H.I.E.L.D, anyway.” Abruptly, Maria realised her gaze had dropped to his mouth. She continued, quite deliberately.“I’m guessing the STRIKE boys have given you the induction already, though.”

Rogers winced. “At least this time it wasn’t a brothel.”

Maria blinked, then realised. “The Howling Commandos?”

“In Rheims.”

She was tempted to ask the outcome. _A super-soldier walks into a brothel…_ But that would cross some lines she didn’t want to step over. And while there were no rules against fraternisation in S.H.I.E.L.D, she’d been there and done that, and she had no intention of doing it again.

The boxes of leftovers were set on the edge of the table, and the bill put down.

Rogers slipped it out from under her fingers. “I ate most of it. I’ll pay.”

Maria rolled her eyes, but let him put the money down. She was rather less sanguine when he moved around to help her into her jacket. “Unnecessary, Rogers.”

“Humour me.”

She humoured him, flipping her hair out from under the collar before turning to face him. He’d fitted a cap back on his head again. “And I suppose you’ll want to hold the door open on the way out, too.”

If she smile had been dangerous across the table, it was lethal in close quarters. “I think my masculinity will survive if you hold the door open.”

They were out on the street and passing a family heading over to the local sandwich shop before Rogers spoke again. “Anything about the supersoldier facility and where they’ve moved it to?”

“No. No sign of them in Europe yet.”

“I imagine a squad of supersoldiers would be difficult to hide.”

“You hid in plain sight for two years,” Maria reminded him.

“There was just one of me. And people mostly thought I was an actor, not a soldier.” He glanced out over the parking lot. “And nobody makes an army of supersoldiers without the intent to use them.”

“And that’s S.H.I.E.L.D’s worry.” Maria paused as they reached a footpath that led out of the parking lot. It would run along the road, through a nearby park, and over to her apartment complex. “Thanks for buying dinner, but I can walk from here.”

He tilted his head. “Okay. I’ll walk with you.”

“And walk back again?”

“Sure. Or I could ride you back.

Maria blinked, but Rogers was oblivious to the innuendo, one hand outstretched as though to take her arm and escort her down the path. She rolled her eyes and walked past him. “You’re still a mother hen, Rogers.”

He strolled alongside her, gently swinging the bag of leftovers from his fingers. “I can’t quite see it, myself.” Amusement seeped through his voice.

Maria rolled her eyes, but didn’t glance over as a car gunned its engines on the way past and the passengers hooted out the window. “Are you back tomorrow?”

“I’m on the list for the Surabaya insertion. But I’m in the Triskelion on Thursday to meet with Romanoff for a review of my missions so far.”

“Do you think you’ve passed?”

“Is there an exam?” Rogers glanced over at her. “She and Barton usually run missions together, don’t they?”

Maria debated whether he was fishing for information about Natasha’s love life. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had come at the whole situation sideways. Although it seemed at odds with his previous assertion that there was nothing between him and Natasha, so perhaps he was just curious. Most people were, given the way she and Barton interacted.

“STRIKE Team Delta – one of our best. They worked out a good partnership when she first came to S.H.I.E.L.D, and it stuck. Rather like you and the Howling Commandos.”

“Did you ever have that connection with someone out in the field?”

“Not really.”

“Not even Agent Thorpe?”

She frowned a little. “We never worked together in the field.”

“And now he’s Head of European Operations and you’re Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Rogers paused at the kerb as they waited for a bus to go by. “Does it ever conflict?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You know, I always wonder whether people ask Alan if his relationship with the Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D is a conflict.”

“Maybe they do.”

“And how many people ask if _your_ relationship with the first Director of S.H.I.E.L.D is a conflict in the job you do?”

“That’s—” Rogers wasn’t stupid. He picked up the parallels immediately. A glance at him out of the corner of her eye showed the discomforting realisation on his face. “That’s...different.”

“Maybe it is.” Maria matched his tone, saw him wince. “You’re a man, after all, and Peggy and I are just women.”

He snorted. “Hill, there’s nothing ‘just’ about you.”

Shocked into silence, and with her cheeks wanting to go hot, it took Maria a moment to answer. “I think that’s one of the best compliments I’ve ever received.”

“You’re welcome.” Rogers hesitated. “There was nothing ‘just’ about Peggy either.”

Maria contemplated staying on the topic, but judged she’d pushed it as far as it could go for the moment. “Have you gone to see her?”

“Yes. Several times.” His expression was troubled, slightly grieving. “Do they know how long she has?”

“How long is a piece of string?” Maria shrugged. “Either way, she’s reaching the end of hers.”

“Did you know her very well?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘very well’. She took an interest in my early career.” Maria hedged as they walked along the stretch of fence that led to the pedestrian gate into her apartment complex.

“She wasn’t retired by then?”

“Semi-retired,” Maria told him as they reached the gate. She turned to face him. “I was...I was present when she had the stroke.”

“I’m sure there’s a story behind that,” Rogers said, watching her. “But I imagine you don’t want to tell it now.”

For a moment, Maria thought she heard something like an invitation in his voice – to be asked in, to be told the story, to...what? She blinked and told herself and her imagination to get a grip. Rogers was interested in her stories about Peggy, nothing more. “Maybe another day,” she said dismissively. “Thanks for dinner.”

“Thanks for the leftovers.” He hoisted the bag, then assumed a stance of waiting.

“You’re going to wait until I’ve gone in, aren’t you?”

“This surprises you?”

Maria rolled her eyes, and keyed in her code to open the gate. “Good night, Rogers.”

“‘Night, Hill.”

She didn’t look back to see if he was watching for her to go in.

* * *

_Cold, so cold, icy cold...she’d been cold for so long and her arm was pain—no, her shoulder was pain—no, her chest—her head—_

_And there, swimming blurry through the pain was a face – square jawed, blue eyes, with a halo of gold—hah, funny, that… Her chest seized up—a stabbing clutch like something was clawing at her heart._

_“…do it fast...not going to be long...need the imprint…”_

_“Hey,” said the man, smiling a little, slightly hesitant, “We weren’t sure you’d make it. You fell, remember?”_

_Cold, so cold, icy cold…she’d been cold for so long…_

_“You were injured; the doctors are trying to make it better, but I need you to relax – to co-operate, okay? Just relax and let them do their work.”_

_She tried to speak, struggled to make her tongue work but everything felt so distance, so far away._

_“I’ll be here, all the way,” he reassured her as she struggled against the darkness… “Just let them work on you, let them do what they do best and you’ll be fine…”_

_Darkness claimed her – swallowing her up into oblivion._

* * *

Alan had nothing much on the supersoldiers’ new base of operations. “Somewhere between Lithuania and their destination, they split up and changed transport. We found the trucks in Seville, in use by a transport company that doesn’t have any apparent ties. We’re digging deeper. Also, you cut me off last night just as I was asking how everything was going.”

“I was busy.” Maria skimmed the summary of the report from the Zentrum labs. “And I’m still alive.”

“The Abomination is still alive,” Alan pointed out. “Technically, anyway. So that’s a non-answer unparalleled. Are you going to make me read the report from Russo?”

“Are you even authorised?”

“I could apply.”

“We’re not seeing each other anymore, Alan.”

“Did you remember the part where I said you’re hard on the people who care about you?”

“The rest of them aren’t obvious about it.” Maria sighed.

“So we’re okay so long as nobody knows?”

The question had an edge – not surprising, given how their relationship had ended. Alan, however, was valuable among her ex-boyfriends in that he’d remained friends, even in his disappointment. It had, she reflected, become something of a joke between them – although, given his comment, maybe not as much of a joke as she’d thought. “Alan.”

“I’ll do you a deal,” he said. “Give me the short version of Russo’s report and I’ll leave the topic alone.”

Maria sighed. If Rogers was a mother hen steamroller, then Alan was a ferret – he could get into just about anything with a little effort and the careful application of charm. It was one of the things that she’d found so attractive back in the beginning. “Short version: I’m fine. Slightly longer version: I’m not turning into a supersoldier – no appreciable difference in strength or skill, no improved information processing or insight. In short, I have a molotov cocktail of bichemicals in my body, and they’re doing nothing.”

“Except causing blackouts and fainting spells.”

“Actually, none of those lately either.” Just the dreams, although more fragmented, less lucid.

“So the net result is, ‘I got shot up with supersoldier serum, and I all I got were a lousy bunch of medical tests’.”

“Pretty much. I’m back on duty – no heavy machinery, no missions. Desk only. And if I’m a good girl for the next three weeks then I get a pat on the head and the chance to drive myself home.”

“Just what every Deputy Director wants.” Alan murmured. “So, this is the sound of me dropping the topic of your health – at least until I have cause to be concerned again.”

“And I repeat, ‘We’re not seeing each other anymore.’”

“For an intelligent woman, you’re can be increadibly obtuse, Maria. Caring about someone isn’t just about sex. At least, not for most of us mere mortals.”

“You said you’d drop the topic.”

“I did,” he admitted with a shrug of his shoulders on the screen. “Okay, try this on for size. We need to talk about the personnel pull for Insight. With all the sociopolitical crises bubbling in Middle East, and spilling over the borders, we need at least a _couple_ of competent techs in Europe. Salesh can’t handle everything in his region, even with India to hand, and Asia’s still recovering from losing Jyuuk. He kept the national hotheads from going at each other instead of the enemy.”

Maria knew – she’d been in more than a few meetings when Jyuuk managed to haul back on the reins.

“I thought it didn’t matter where they were as long as they had access to the net.”

“Nice propaganda if you can get it. Tell that to the tech who’s been woken up at 4am Eastern Time to do work at 9am in Central European time. Tell that to the _boss_ who’s managing the tech in US time who’s been woken up at 4am Eastern to do work in Europe.”

Maria scrolled through the list, noting the shorthand of who could do what, as well as the languages and experience they had in S.H.I.E.L.D and the various installations around the world. “I can put a word in, Alan, but if Xima’s been calling them in because they have Circle One skills, then my hands are tied. Fury, Pierce, and the World Security Council are fully behind Insight and what it can do, and nothing I can say against it is going to make a difference.”

Alan snorted. “Anything you can do to stem the flow of techs would be appreciated. As would the occasional update, which you’re never going to give me, so I’ll just apply to Russo.”

As she hung up, Maria reflected that if he knew she wasn’t going to put him on the list of people to be told about her situation, why had he asked in the first place? And, yes, she could tell Russo and Fury not to permit it, but Alan was one of the few friends she’d made and held in the ranks.

The truth was, there were no shortage of colleagues she worked with and got along with, had drinks with, and even some she could socialise with outside of S.H.I.E.L.D, but very few whom she trusted enough to relax with.

She dropped a message to Russo to include Alan on the list, and started working through her ‘To Do’ list. With Insight on the books, and the World Security Council asking for updates every day, Fury was busy. A lot of the things he usually dealt with – politics, organisations, powers – came to her.

And Maria Hill wasn’t Nicholas Fury.

She dealt with what she dealt with, as she could, with whom she had. And just gritted her teeth when yet another director of an Alphabet Soup organisation implied that she shouldn’t bother her pretty head about this, and simply pushed the point.

As she hung up on the third call, and put her head in her hands, Maria wondered if Fury hadn’t done it deliberately. She wouldn’t have put it past him. Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D had been started by a woman, and so it was better than some of the organisations out there, but that didn’t keep sexists from being sexist. And the sexists were everywhere in the Intelligence community.

 _They’ve underestimated you,_ Peggy had said that day in the apartment – not ‘Peggy’, not then. Just an elderly lady with dark eyes that had seen too much and understood more about Maria than her Marine Sergeant had ever imagined. _But that’s nothing new, is it?_

_There’s nothing ‘just’ about you, Hill._

The man was definitely a menace. And a distraction she didn’t need right now – even if he did bring her coffee.

She didn’t glance at the morning’s cup now in the wastebasket. It had been waiting for her when she got in, proving that he’d been in even earlier. And she wasn’t going to think about how nice a coffee and a visit from Steve Rogers would be right now. She was going to drink her water and attend to the next thing on her list, which was…

Read Sharon Carter’s report on Rogers.

Which consisted more or less of: ‘He’s a loner, doesn’t bring friends or dates back, doesn’t sleep much, hasn’t received any odd parcels, packages, or people, and lives an ordinary, unexceptionable life.’ Terrorists weren’t under as much surveillance as Steve Rogers – although the reasons were somewhat different. Then again, Maria mused, a man like Steve Rogers with a cause in his craw? The options pretty much narrowed down to ‘get behind him or get out of the way’. And God help S.H.I.E.L.D if it ever found itself on his bad side.

Nothing they hadn’t known when they brought him in.

Maria marked the report as read by her, noted Sharon’s opinion that Rogers was going to need a personal connection to the world before long, or else he was going to drift entirely out of it, and wondered if Sharon was volunteering for the role. Certainly, she had proximity going for her, and Rogers wouldn’t be on his guard with Sharon the way he was with—

 _Distract,_ she told herself.

She focused on the incoming requests from Alan, contemplated how to balance them against the demands of Xima Rudrapatna of the Insight Projects Operating Applications Division and carefully ignored the sneaking suspicion she was developing a crush on Captain America.

* * *

Over the next few weeks there was no shortage of things with which to distract herself.

Project Insight had reviews to be completed, complaints and issues to be followed up, and personnel to be juggled. Alan got to keep a few of his people, and Maria endured four days of straight complaints from Xima, before it dropped to pointed remarks once every two days.

There were missions to be approved, operational logistics to be worked out, Security Councils to appease, and Phil to avoid. At least that last wasn’t difficult. It appeared that he’d fixated on Fury as the answer to all his questions. As a result, Maria wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that she’d been overlooked or insulted that someone who knew her that well had passed her by.

The medical tests continued with zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

According to Russo, Maria was perfectly healthy and perfectly normal, just with a supersoldier’s physiological biochemistry.

The dreams continued.

Deep canyons wound maze-like beneath brilliantly starry skies, and dark shadows hunted her through cities and rock formations. The dark-haired man with the haunted eyes blurred into the man who resembled Rogers, blurred into the Terminator standing in the road, and crowds of people drifted past her in a slightly dazed state, sometimes turning to stare at her, sometimes just stepping out of her way as she fled what couldn’t be eluded in her dreams.

And, of course, there was Rogers, who made naught of all her attempts to put him out of mind by continuing to bring her coffee.

Sometimes his presence accompanied the coffee, and it wasn’t as though she could take the coffee and tell him to go. More often than not, it didn’t, which made it a little bit easier. Although not much, Maria realised one morning when Gina noted that Captain Rogers hadn’t come by yet, and her immediate and absently-given response was, “No, he’s in Johannesburg for the next three days.”

“You know,” Gina said when Maria handed back the tablet she’d been given to sign, “if the two of you were anyone else, then I’d say this looks like dating.”

Maria stifled her first instinct – protest – and instead went for, “Apparently he considers me one of his people.”

“And how many of his people does he go out of his way to bring coffee in the mornings?” Gina shrugged when Maria gave her a hard look. “I’m just saying.”

“Don’t say anything,” Maria told her, a little irritated, both by the lack of decent coffee to hand and by the inference, however reasonable it might seem. “And hold my calls. I’m up in Conference Two with Damascus for the next hour.”

In fact, it was the next three hours. When Maria got back to her office, she was exhausted, exasperated, and ravenous...and Fury was sitting in her guest chair.

“What’s happening in the Middle East?”

“Recruiting, mostly.” Maria set her tablet down on the desk and took a long drink of water before continuing. “The Islamic groups in Syria are gearing up for something, although Nazir thinks it might very well be for an intra-faith war. His Shi’ite informants are being close-mouthed, and he claimed he hasn’t heard anything from the Sunnis, but he also wasn’t holding eye contact for long.” She shrugged. “If you want the transcript, it should be done by now. Also, Harry Atwood was bordering on asshole – he didn’t quite suggest we let ‘the Arabs’ all kill each other off, but it was close enough that I spent forty-five minutes redirecting the conversation.”

“Noted. Atwood’s been skating close to the line lately. He keeps this up, he’s going to find himself manning a research station in Antarctica.”

“I can’t see too many people objecting.”

“You included?”

“Me included.”

Atwood had never been one of Maria’s favourite people; he always manage to give the impression that she was just there to look good, and that anything she’d achieved had been pure luck or someone else helping her. But she dealt with him civilly because she had no choice – he was a Level Ten Department Head, and had dug himself into Research and Development over the course of fifteen years. If she wanted tech, she had to go through R&D, and if she had to be nice to Atwood, then she had to be nice to Atwood.

“You didn’t come here to get a sitrep in Damascus, sir.”

“That obvious, am I?” Fury didn’t sit up, though, simply folding his hands over his stomach. “I had a chat with Doc Russo. He says you haven’t relapsed.”

“No, sir.”

He scrutinised her for a moment. “I need to go under for a week, maybe two. Hopefully no more, but there are a couple of corpses that I need to check are still buried.”

Maria knew better than to question her boss’ phrasing. His decision, on the other hand...

“The next fourteen days are going to be the most rigourous on Project Insight.”

“Are you saying you’re not up to the challenge, Hill?”

“I’m saying you don’t get to throw it at me like that.”

“As a matter of fact I do because I have the badge that says ‘Director of S.H.I.E.L.D’, and I _am_ throwing it at you like this.”

She regarded him flatly. “And my medical record?”

“Russo thinks you’re stable for the moment – that the biochemical markers in your bloodstream have reached equilibrium with your body, and…” He leaned forward in his chair and pulled up the report on the desk interface, neatly reorienting it so it faced him. “‘ _Given other blood chemistry markers, combined with the lack of reported blackout episodes and…_ ” Fury trailed off. Blinked. Closed the report. “Anyway, he thinks you’re stabilising,” he repeated. “That’s good enough for me.”

The exact phrase in Russo’s report had been ‘ _combined with the lack of reported blackout episodes and in concert with her menstrual cycle, it seems Commander Hill is going to stabilise to the point where she’ll be permitted back behind the wheel of more than just her personal vehicle._ ’ So, yes, awkward.

“Besides,” Fury added, “you’re going to be watched like a hawk. Don’t give me that look, Hill. It’s nobody who isn’t already aware – last call, that’s Russo, Thorpe, Hartley, Amador, and Rogers.”

“Thorpe’s in Europe. Hartley’s about to join the squads on _The Iliad_. Amador’s back under surveillance at the Hub. Russo’s in his bunker, and Rogers is usually wherever whatever op requires him and his merry men to be on any given day.”

“Are you asking for better watchdogs, Hill?”

“Simply wondering how they’re going to keep an eye on me from all over the place.”

“They’ll manage. They’re S.H.I.E.L.D.” Fury regarded her. “Is your health a concern to you, Hill?”

Maria considered how much to say and decided on, “I’m surprised it hasn’t weighed in further on this matter.”

Fury hesitated a moment, then tilted his face to the ceiling. “Security Code Black.” The windows darkened, and the room lights shifted. “The issue with the _Lemurrian Star_ leaks looks deeper than just one set of leaks. It’s starting to look like we have a bucket full of holes. I’m starting to wonder about that Clairvoyant of Coulson’s. And yes,” he said correctly interpreting her expression, “I’m avoiding him. He’s going to ask questions and he’s not going to like the answer.”

There were battles you went into and battles you let pass by. Maria chose to let this one pas her by. Instead she asked, “Do we have any proof that the Clairvoyant is responsible for the leaks through the _Lemurrian Star_?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. But we don’t have an explicit connection yet.”

Maria nodded, then sat back in her chair. “So what do I need to keep an eye on in the next two weeks?”

* * *

With her head still working through the ramifications of the shift of resources to assist in the hunt for the Clairvoyant, it took Maria a moment to realise the elevator was full of people, and that they were all Rumlow’s STRIKE team – minus Steve Rogers.

“Hill.”

“Rumlow.”

He took a second, quite deliberately waiting that split-second for the situation to become awkward before stepping aside. “There’s still room if you’re game.”

After that, she wasn’t allowed to back down. “Thanks,” she said, walking on. She stood level with Rumlow, and ignored the hulking mass of Jack Rollins behind her left shoulder as she called her floor.

“ _Deputy Director Hill, authorised._ ” The doors slid shut and the car moved off, smooth as silk.

Acutely aware she was standing in the middle of the elevator, surrounded by men who had at least two reasons to hate her guts, Maria turned to Rumlow and, as she did, caught him giving a short, sharp shake of the head to Rollins. But she kept her expression bland. _They can smell your fear._ “Did you get the blueprints in Tenerife?”

“Close enough. Got the guy who designed the system.”

That was surprising; the assessment had been that the man wasn’t interested in defecting. “Found, persuaded, or kidnapped?”

Rumlow glaced sideways at her. “Would you believe ‘got co-opted by’? Turns out the guy was desperate to get out of the place, and saw us as his rescuers. He had everything ready – exit plan, diversion, countermeasures.”

“That does seem pretty desperate.”

“What it is, is pretty fucked up,” Rollins rumbled behind her. “Which is to say, your intel is fucked.”

“Jack.” Rumlow said it mildly, but when he looked back at Maria, the sardonic expression indicated he felt much the same way about it. “It’s big gap, and they’re getting bigger.”

“We don’t know what we don’t know.” Maria quoted the first aphorism of intelligence work. “And we have people working on filling the holes.”

“But are they working hard enough? We’re the ones dying out there.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “You’re allowed to push back on the missions, Rumlow.”

“And who’ll get the job done, then, Hill? We’re the best; who the fuck else is going to manage the job if we don’t? Your precious Delta STRIKE? This is way below Barton’s payscale – and, apparently, interest, considering we’ve been dealing with Romanoff all by her lonesome for the last month.”

Maria didn’t respond to the slam agaist Barton. Rumlow and Barton had never gotten on – too much aggressive swagger, too much lone wolf confidence, and a bad encounter back in the early days. Barton could follow the rules; he just didn’t see why he should follow Rumlow’s.

“You have choices, Rumlow,” she pointed out as the elevator announced, _S.H.I.E.L.D Directorate_. “They’re just not to your liking.”

“Yeah, well, you’d better tell Fury it’s becoming a bigger problem than just ‘not to our liking.’”

Like Maria was nothing better than a messenger girl to carry tales to Fury. Like her answers weren’t good enough. But she kept her temper tamped and her tongue civil, even if her answer had bite. “The Directorate is aware of the issue.”

“So fucking welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D?”

She was actually thinking _Welcome to adult life_ , athough she knew better than to say that out loud. “We do what we can do and what needs doing.”

“Spare me the bullshit.”

The doors opened at her level, and Maria looked up into the slightly startled expression of Rogers. “Hill.”

“Captain.” She walked past him, not bothering to answer Rumlow. Nothing she could say would change his opinion – she’d learned that of certain groups in S.H.I.E.L.D a long time ago. “Good luck in Kabul on Friday.”

“Thank you.”

The elevator doors closed behind her, and with Rumlow and his squad closed off from her, Maria allowed her neck to crawl. She’d been marginal on their radar before Vilnius – dismissed out of hand. But ever since that mission...

Maria made a note to check up on Carreras – last she’d checked he was in rehab for the leg, and working his way steadily back to health. If he stayed in S.H.I.E.L.D, then she’d definitely be recommending him for Operations Logistics – some of the best heads for logistics came out of those who’d retired from the field – or been retired due to health issues.

In the meantime, she had things to do, missions to review, strings to pull.

Phone calls to avoid.

Coulson called four times in an hour – at least, he called Fury, and the call redirected to her. Each time, Maria let it ring out; she was under orders not to engage with Coulson unless it was absolutely unavoidable; Fury had been quite clear on that matter. May was monitoring him, and regular contact only increased the risk of contamination – either of other parties finding out Coulson wasn’t dead, or Coulson discovering what they’d actually done to him.

Given May’s reports on Coulson, though, that line was rapidly running out – if it hadn’t already.

But that wasn’t for Maria to worry about.

She had other things to manage – like the intel leaks caused by the _Lemurrian Star_. She trusted that Fury had a plan for that, but he’d been keeping it under wraps, and, knowing Fury, it was going to be a long game. Over the course of the last year she’d come to realise that her boss never did anything straightforwardly if he could do it by roundabout means.

So far, it had worked pretty well for S.H.I.E.L.D.

Insight would change that – quite significantly. No more hiding in the shadows, no more dealing under the table – out in the open, with the cards laid flat. All bets were off, all weapons displayed.

Had Fury considered what it would mean to have a new paradigm of global security? To be active instead of waiting for the other side to show their face first? Maria made a note to flag one of the psychs and run the thought past her. It was a wild theory, yeah, but that didn’t mean it was wrong.

Her next few days were full.

Coulson went hunting for TAHITI. And found it. Given the number of times he called first Fury, then her, Maria imagined he was looking for explanations. She made sure she wasn’t in a position to have to give them.

Luckily there was no shortage of things to take her attention, to cause her to be busy when Coulson’s calls came in: signing off on the final reviews of Insight; double-checking the code to reroute around the _Lemurrian Star_ satellites, and expanding it to key personnel in S.H.I.E.L.D; continuing to run S.H.I.E.L.D missions and operations; and gently herding cats of all sizes and stripes.

Including Tony Stark, who somehow had a sixth sense for when things were at their busiest since he always managed to call right in the middle of mayhem.

“What’s happened to my repulsorlift technology? I mean, Fury was all over it when I made suggestions, but I haven’t seen hide or hair of it.”

“Don’t you have better things to do right now? Like rebuilding your house and your organisation?”

“My house is fine, thanks for asking. We’ve set up headquarters in New York. Pepper likes it a lot better – closer to all the people she needs to kick along now that we’re no longer working so closely with the military. Also, this time, I’m literally just the messenger girl.”

“You can’t be literally the messenger girl when you’re literally not a girl, Stark.”

“Do you have any poetry in your soul, Hill? What I need to pass along is that Pepper would like you to call her, thanks. Apparently, you previously called her to pump her for information about Extremis?”

“I’ve previously called her for a lot of things,” Maria said, typing up an email to a group of agents in the Indonesia office and wondering if she’d phrased it too harshly. Then decided what the hell and hit ‘send’. “But so noted. Tell her things have been busy lately, but I’ll get to her in the next week.”

“Just so long as you do. Also, tell Rogers to come and check out his suite in the tower. He doesn’t answer my calls.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“You wound me, Hill. Wound me.”

“You’ve survived worse.”

“True.”

Two hours later, when Rogers came in with coffee, Maria passed on the message and watched him grimace as he placed the bag and the cup on her desk.

“Is there any point in explaining to Stark that I don’t want a suite in the tower?”

“Other than explaining to him what he already knows and which doesn’t bother him?” Maria shrugged. “Stark wants to do this, therefore it’s done. His father wasn’t like that?”

“His father was in the middle of a war. What Howard wanted…” Rogers sighed. “Yeah, he did that, too.”

“Just more buttoned-up.”

“There was nothing buttoned up about Howard. He didn’t belong in the army any more than Stark does. Do you ever wonder how he and Colonel Rhodes came to be friends?”

“I gather that there’s a long history.” Which didn’t at all address the matter of exactly how similar Stark and Rhodes were when you peeled off their outer layers: a protective streak a week long and a helicarrier wide, a serious dollop of ego and arrogance, and the same direct charm – albeit seriously toned down in Rhodes.

Not exactly unlike certain other men of Maria’s acquaintance.

But this was just coffee, cookie, and a catch-up – nothing to signify. Rogers didn’t have anyone outside of work to connect with – well, nobody in the modern world. He volunteered with various veterans’ groups, and went jogging around the city every morning. He spent a little time with Romanoff post-mission and hung out with the guys from STRIKE, but his connections in the world were limited.

“Look,” Maria told him, “Check out the apartment, tell Pepper it’s fine, take the key they offer you. You don’t have to use it, but it makes Stark feel useful, and it gets him off S.H.I.E.L.D’s back – at least on that aspect.”

Rogers sat back, a half-smile on his face. “Expedience?”

“Necessity.”

He sipped his coffee and regarded her in an unnerving fashion – like she was a map he hadn’t yet worked out. “How’s your medical status?”

“That’s private.”

“I don’t need book, chapter, and verse, Hill, just the basics.”

She sighed. “No faints, no dizzy spells. No medical indicators, nothing that the tests are bringing to the light.” Apart from the supersoldier biochemistry which she definitely wasn’t going to mention to Rogers. The last thing she wanted or needed was his interest in this matter. “I’m still riding a desk, and likely will be until I can convince Russo to okay me, and Fury to let me out of the Triskelion.”

“Uhuh.” Rogers stared at her a moment before abruptly asking. “How’s Thorpe?”

“Alan’s fine.” With no idea of what he was angling at, she left it at that. “So are Hartley and Amador.”

“Do you see them much? Your friends, I mean.”

“We keep in contact. It’s occasional rather than intimate.”

“Seems like a…lonely way to be friends.”

Compared with living in a Brooklyn neighbourhood during the 1930s, or in the wartime footing of Europe in the 1940s, it probably was. But it was what Maria knew, and it was comfortable for her.

That didn’t mean it was for everyone.

Maria considered him for a long moment, and mentally sighed. Then she leaned forward, setting her cup on the desk. “Rogers, go talk to Stark. Or to Ms. Potts if you prefer civil conversation. Look at the suite they set up for you, have a chat with Banner. It’s… You don’t have to be best buddies with them – with any of the Avengers, or any of the personnel in S.H.I.E.L.D. In fact, it’s probably best that you don’t.”

“Cross-contamination?”

“I was thinking ‘not crossing the streams’,” Maria told him and watched him blank out. “Never mind. Either way, you need something outside of your work with S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Trying to socialise me, Hill?”

She snorted. “You don’t need any lessons in socialising from me, Rogers. But I think you need something outside of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I wouldn’t have said Stark was it.” He leaned back in his chair, considering. “My neighbour seems nice. We’ve chatted on the stairs a few times.”

Maria didn’t wince. But that had been the point of putting Sharon there, hadn’t it? To develop a connection with Steve Rogers? Well, one of them. And Sharon was very likeable when she chose to be, and what woman wouldn’t choose to be likeable when dealing with Steve Rogers? “And talk to Stark.”

“You’re pretty insistent on that point.”

“You’re an Avenger. At some point you’re going to be called upon again, so if you could learn to work with Stark and Banner, and not just Romanoff and Barton…”

“I don’t imagine Thor has to undergo co-ordination with the other Avengers.”

“I’m not about to tell the Prince of Asgard what he should or shouldn’t be doing.”

“Just Captain America.”

“Considering he’s sitting in my visitor’s chair, drinking coffee? Yes.”

Rogers made a face that wasn’t quite a grimace, “I’ll call, but I don’t promise to be civil.”

“Just the way Stark likes it.”

“You gotta admire Ms Potts for putting up with that so long.”

Maria tilted her head. “I think I’d rather admire Pepper for a whole heap of other things, not all of which have to do with Tony Stark.”

“I can understand that.” Rogers’ looked at her for a moment, his expression blank as he considered what she’d said. “Okay,” he told her. “I guess I can call Stark.”

“Thank you.”

“And socialise with my neighbour.”

Maria blinked, but managed, “That, too.”

He smiled, brief and...a little wistful? She wasn’t sure of the expression, and it was gone a moment later. But the next few minutes felt...weird. Like she’d missed a cue, and he was being polite, but he wasn’t exactly pleased.

When he’d gone, she scrunched up the paper bag, and tossed it and the empty cup in the bin. She’d pointed him in the direction S.H.I.E.L.D had approved and given him a little push down that trail. It was what the job required – what they’d anticipated, in fact. And Sharon would be good with Steve; sharp as a tack, with a playful edge to her competence. He could do with someone who’d laugh at him, with him.

Someone who wasn’t Maria Hill, Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Maria pulled up her desktop interface and buried herself in her work for the rest of that day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I have no idea if there's such a thing as phenyl-amylates in the human biochemistry, but if there were, I suspect they're not supposed to be there. Or, you know, very mild. Sorry to anyone with medical background who's reading this - I know it hurts.


	6. Chapter 6

The call was unexpected enough that Maria authorised it to come through.

“I thought you were dead.”

“Yeah,” Skye said and shifted the camera to show the medical cube she was in. “Reports of my untimely demise, etc., etc. But I’m still in holding until Jemma decides to let me out of prison.” The last words were said loud and emphatic, like she was trying to make a point.

If she was, the point went unaddressed; there was silence on the other end of the call.

Maria arched a brow. Skye shrugged. “Worth a try. Anyway, I’m in recovery, I’m bored, and so I was following up on those searches you assigned me. Thoroughness and so on. I sent you the stuff about the clinics, right? Better living through chemistry?”

“They came in useful.” Maria told her. “Good work.”

“Is there, like, a finders’ fee? No?” Skye sighed. “You guys are no fun. May’s been giving me the eyebrow lately – like, even more than usual. And she and Coulson are thick as thieves. Say, is there a history there?”

Maria gave her a fixed and fierce look.

“Do they give you training for that expression? Cause you’re really good at it.”

“You were doing follow up research.”

“And some IP tracking. A lot of communication between certain clinics – results, data, and an encryption I haven’t been able to break. Yeah, I know,” she said when Maria lifted an eyebrow. “Confessions of a failed hacker. But seriously, this thing has a recursive algorithm that seems to encrypt as it goes; it’s really weird and kind of freaky. I know people who think like this, but I’ve never seen a program do it.”

“So you can’t break the encryption? Would you make an educated guess as to what’s in the files?”

“I wouldn’t say I can’t break the encryption; just that it would take, oh, a couple of weeks to filter through the possibilities, and it’d be slow going. As to what’s in it… I’d say patient records of treatments. Just taking a look at the stuff I can decrypt, it’s mostly the patient personal details. There’s no specifics about what they’ve done, just Procedure A, Medications B, and nothing about what the procedures and medications actually mean.”

“You’ve got a patient list?”

“Yes. Although I’m not sure I should actually give it to you; because, you know, patient privacy and all that. Oh, and there’s the look again.” The young woman grinned. “I’ll package it up and send it over.”

Maria made a decision on the spot and pulled out the code she’d had made to circumvent the _Lemurrian Star_ satellites. “I’m sending you a routing packet with inbuilt encryption– put the data in that and send it off.”

“Talk about paranoi—Whoa.” Skye blinked as she opened up the code and associated libraries. “This is—Who are you trying to hide from?”

In truth, there was really only so much she could tell a Level One agent. “Bad guys.”

“Haha. No, really, this thing is like…complicated. Like serious neural networks complicated. Neat, though – I’d love to meet the coder who did this job, because it’s pretty slick. But, wow,” she started typing into her laptop. “Talk about surprises. And…sending. Both the patient list and the stuff I can’t decrypt. Also, the IP tracking data I found. Some hubs, but nothing big to signify and—Uh oh.”

“Skye!” Dr. Simmons’ voice was severe. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I’m in bed, see? And just having a chat with a friend!”

Simmons wasn’t inclined to believe Skye; her head poked into the video field. “Who is th—? Oh, Commander Hill. Um. I’m sorry, but my patient needs to rest.” The last words were directed at Skye.

“I’m in bed?” Skye shrugged. “Okay, okay, I’m going. Thanks for the chat, Hill. Always fun comparing your expressions to May. Although I think I’m getting the hang of May’s expressions, so maybe I’ll eventually catch on to yours, too?”

“Skye! Good evening, Commander – or whatever time of day it happens to be where you are.”

Maria rang off, faintly amused by the by-play. The smile dropped as she opened up the message and looked at the patient record – or, rather, at the mess of formatting that had patient names in it.

She sent it off to Russo to see if he could make head or tail of it, tagging Fury. A separate copy of the file went to the coder who’d put together the _Lemurrian Star_ reroute program – she’d done a pretty decent job of it last time, maybe she could eke something out of this encryption, too.

Russo replied with a work request for three hours of her time. The location was deep down in the bowels of the Triskelion – deeper, even, than the Insight helicarriers – and the reason was: _psychic testing_.

Maria stared at those two words for a while. Then she called Russo.

“You’re not poking through my brain with that thing.”

“The Koenigs assure me it’s safe.”

“I’m not likely to take _them_ at their word,” Maria told him. “Why psychic testing?”

“Because those biochemical stabilisers are doing something and it’s not physical or emotional, so far as modern medicine can ascertain. You’re physically fine, your hormones are stable, you haven’t gone psychotic on us.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Hill. Or is it ‘cute’ these days? Either way, everything seems as though it should be normal – except for those biochemical indicators.”

“You’re going to push this, aren’t you?”

“You’re still in the red when it comes to your medical status,” he reminded her. “This is one more step to getting you cleared.”

Maria glared at the screen, but Russo just sat there. “1600 hours,” she told him. “I can spare three hours then.”

The prospect of the testing nagged at her all afternoon, though, making her restless and a little short with Gina. It wasn’t improved when she got a call from Alan as she stepped into the elevator on her way down to Russo’s testing location. “Now? Really?”

“Just checking up.”

“Long day, going to get longer. I’m fine, Alan. You can stop checking in on me.”

“I need something to do in between wrangling Europe.”

“Take up knitting,” she suggested.

He sighed, a long huff of disappointment. “Always so prickly.”

“You wouldn’t love me if I wasn’t.” Maria said flippantly, then regretted it as the elevator doors opened on Rogers, his expression careful and wooden. “Uh, I have to go. I’ll talk with you later.”

Rogers ordered his floor and the doors slid shut. “Thorpe?”

“Checking up on me.” Maria put the phone away and took those few seconds to get her composure back. “Called Stark yet?”

“Called Ms. Potts. I’m going in to see her tomorrow.”

“Pepper’s easy to deal with.”

“I’ve always had that impression about her.” The doors opened at the garage level, and Rogers stepped back to wave her out.

“No, I’m continuing on.”

She saw that flicker of surprise and realisation in his eyes before he damped it down and stepped out: _Secret S.H.I.E.L.D business and none of his_. Still, his farewell was courteous. “Have a good evening, Commander.”

Maria thought about that a little as she descended into the bowels of the Triskelion foundations, into a rabbit warren that existed around Insight’s giant hangar. Rogers had stepped back lately, which was good. Yet, sometimes she wished…for what? She wasn’t Captain America’s type at all.

_Brunette, authoritative, making a name for herself in an unfriendly world…Nope, not his type at all._

Whichever way she looked at it, falling for Captain America was a really bad idea.

_You’re not falling for **Captain America** , though._

And she wasn’t going to think about this now. Or, really, ever.

She put it out of mind and headed on down to the room Russo had specified.

Maria had never learned how to make the distinction between the Koenigs, and they kept assuring her it didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t – to them. But she always felt just a little guilty about it.

Today, though? She didn’t feel guilty at all.

“It doesn’t bite, Commander, I assure you.”

“Not physically, perhaps.” Maria stared at the lie detector, gritting her teeth.

Russo peered over the rim of his glasses at Maria. “What happens in SL5 E-11-645, stays in SL5 E-11-645.”

“Ha-ha.” She gritted her teeth. “No recording devices. No, not even you,” she told Koenig.

“Commander.”

“You’ll want at least one copy,” Russo said, and patted the large black case on the table beside him. “Luckily, I was aware of your paranoia, and still have a couple of antiques around.”

The old-fashioned videocamera was deemed an acceptable record – it could be copied, but not easily, and Maria would get the tape. She’d have a bitch of a time trying to find appropriate media players, but that was the problem of her and her paranoia.

“Just as long as it doesn’t contain your old sex tapes,” Maria said sourly.

“Well, we’re being optimistic today,” Russo retorted, before handing over a sheet of paper. “These are the questions we’re going to ask you. Because I knew you’d want to know.”

Maria looked over the questions, thought about the answers in her head, and nixed two. “I don’t see how they have relevance to the topic at hand.”

“They’re a baseline for the way your mind works, Commander. So we have something to measure against.”

She didn’t shudder as she seated herself in the chair and the straps snapped around her wrists. She didn’t panic as Koenig fitted the side panels around her. But she felt itchy, uncomfortable, tense.

“You’re sure you want to do this, Hill?”

“I’m sure I don’t. But I want to get off the no-fly list.” Maria shrugged. “This is one of the hoops.”

“All right, Commander, we’ll start with the basics.”

The baseline values were easy – her name, her position, her background. Her career – the parts that were public knowledge. She answered levelly – as levelly as she could, given her discomfort with the chair. There were a questions on her opinions – political situations and command decisions and people. They took more effort, more thought. Sometimes it took a few seconds for her to answer past the nagging sensation that there was more happening, that this wasn’t just a test, that there was something else—

Clamps around her head, lights flashing into her brain, electrical impulses writhing through her mind. She tried to hide, thoughts scattering like shadows, but they had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. They screamed in her thoughts as the light stabbed through them, tearing them into little fragments that scrambled to put themselves together but could only manage shredded approximations of the whole—

She twisted in the throes of pain and panic—

* * *

_Darkness and a man’s harsh, panting breath._

_“They got to you, too?”_

_“Who did?” Her voice rustled through dust and empty, echoing space._

_“The cold ones.” The shiver ached in his voice, old terror, long internalised. “So cold, icy cold, a long cold war...”_

_Ice and snow, burying, preserving, keeping – like Rogers buried in ice for seventy years to be woken – square jawed, blue eyes, his hair like a halo of gold—_

_A flutter of memory, almost there, almost—_

* * *

Koenig was apologetic. Russo wasn’t – at least, not on the outside.

“You don’t have any records of torture in your file.”

Maria didn’t answer as she drank down half a bottle of water in an attempt to stave off the headache that was threatening at the edges of her consciousness. The statement wasn’t quite a question – more of a dancing around the question Russo didn’t want to ask directly, and so she didn’t have to answer it.

“I’ve got some Advil around here,” Koenig pulled open one of the multitude of drawers.

“Don’t need it.” She looked Russo in the eye. “I want to see the video.”

The video showed her starting to struggle in the chair restraints, at which point they stopped the questioning and took her out. But the instant she was released she went limp.

Maria frowned. “It didn’t feel like it ended. Not for ages.”

“You were out for nearly fifteen minutes.”

“It felt like it went longer. Hours. And it wasn’t a flashback. I don’t—I haven’t.”

Russo studied her. “Well, you’re putting up in one of the sleeping cubes tonight. No arguments – consider it a medical directive. Yes, you’ve got a driver, but right now I barely trust you to get from this room up to one of the cubes by yourself.”

Maria nearly argued it. Instead she shrugged, like she’d intended to stay overnight all along, and climbed off the gurney they’d put her on when it was clear she wasn’t going to come out of whatever fugue she’d gone into. “I guess this means I’m back on the no-fly list.”

“Well, it was a specific scenario this time – being held down and interrogated, although we don’t know the trigger. Of course,” he added wih a pointed look, “if you don’t take medical advice and stay the night in one of the sleeping cubes upstairs, I’m going to declare you unfit for duty.”

“Blackmail.”

“Judicious blackmail.” He said it as though the qualifier made it all better.

Maria rolled her eyes, took the tablet he offered, and booked a sleeping cube. “I’m not doing this again.”

“After that, I wouldn’t want you to.” Russo grimaced. “But the question of your biochemistry remains, Hill, and we don’t have any satisfying answers.”

“They might have to go unanswered for the moment – much as I dislike being off the list. Seven days to Insight; after that, Fury thinks we should have some breathing space.”

“Fury thinks too much. Always did.”

Koenig was hovering. “Uh, Commander? The chair is due to go back to the Fridge next week, what with Insight and everything, but I was hoping that maybe—”

Maria sighed. If there was one thing she’d learned about the Koenigs, it was that they were protective of their own. “You want it to go to Providence Base?”

“Well, Eric wants to get a look at it, and…”

“Send me the transfer order and I’ll get it stamped and moving.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

“Go to bed,” Russo added as she headed out the door. “Go directly to bed. Do not pass your office, do not collect your paperwork.”

She rolled her eyes – how did she manage to get stuck with all the mother hen steamrollers, for God’s sake? But she bypassed her office and took the elevator directly to the level with the ‘sleep factory’ as it was comedically termed by most S.H.I.E.L.D personnel. She did stop pick up her personal tablet from her locker which was on the way. As she started to close the door on her handbag and other personal items, she paused, and thought about calling one of the Level One aides and getting a ride home anyway. Then she thought about the next time she’d have to face Russo.

_Ugh. Not worth it._

She closed the locker door and headed up to the sleeping cube, and was asleep mere moments after she got herself horizontal.

* * *

_Down at the street, the world was cement dust and city blocks, crushed cars and broken bodies – human and Chitauri. Above the skyscrapers, the cloudless blue overhead showed no sign of the gaping hole through which the Chitauri had come._

_Behind her, there was the scrape of boot on gritted cement, and she turned to look at the man treading carefully among the corpses, looking at them with an expression like shock._

_“This was...war.” The murmur was shocked as he lifted his eyes to hers – blue and frank and somehow very young and very old all at once. “Were you in it?”_

_“Not exactly. It wasn’t my fight.”_

_“Not this time.” He nodded, more to himself than to her. “But next time?”_

_“If I have to.” Maria looked out at the mess of the streets in her dream and felt the sting of exasperation at the job she’d been left to do. “I’m not waiting for a hero to turn up.”_

_“No.” His voice was suddenly rougher – raw and brutally edged. Maria looked up into the empty eyes of the operative, standing where the soldier had stood. “You were your own Kyle Reece.”_

* * *

With the countdown to Insight going strong, Maria had no shortage of things to oversee – not least of which was that the backdoor program was properly installed, that all the personnel assigned to it were where they needed to be, and that the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D’s operations weren’t being dragged down by the lack of key personnel.

Fury came back and took over the political wrangling, much to Maria’s relief. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do it, just that she preferred not to. She didn’t have the patience to play footsie with everyone – or a mind twisted enough to keep two steps ahead of everyone. That wasn’t her forte. Give her a problem, and she’d solve it, but being Director of S.H.I.E.L.D – even Acting Director – was too much like pressing her brain through a sieve.

She had enough things on her mind without having to navigate the pit of vipers that was the alphabet soup of the intelligence community.

Such as a visit from the Black Widow, who brought intel.

“You said a month,” Maria told her, waving down Gina’s protests as Romanoff slipped in the door.

“I did,” came the agreement as she tossed Maria a pen drive over the desk. “I’ve been asking around some old contacts. The old modification programs are dead – most of them died in the early 00s – like the one you shut down at Saturnus.”

Maria wasn’t surprised Natasha knew about Saturnus. “Do they know anything about the supersoldiers at Vilnius?”

“No. But my contacts did pass on some intel about modification attempts, although most were a year ago and more. I did some cross-checking and tracing back – it looks like your ‘better living through chemistry’ crowd gets around.”

Pulling up one of Skye’s list of companies, Maria turned the interface to Natasha. “Any familiar names?”

Natasha studied the list of parents and subsidiaries. “AIM, of course. Domovoi...Sohnen Enterprises... One of the geneticists I spoke with, she said six months ago there were a lot of inquiries about people with biomedical experience – chemistry, genetics, human DNA sampling. All professional, all above-board, but very intent on getting the best people.”

Maria made a note to check with Helen Cho at U-Gin. While Helen would never leave the company her father had developed, she was high-profile and well-known enough in the business to make her a target for headhunters. And her people were _good_.

“The thing is,” Natasha continued, “the woman I spoke with said she’s not one of the best in her field, but they still kept coming back to her with some pretty good deals.”

“Why didn’t she take one of the offers?”

“She has a family. The kids are in school. Her work is respected, and she’s a good manager.” Her smile was thin. “You might want a mad scientist to spearhead your work into new and unknown regions, but you need someone responsible and organised to keep it going – these people creating supersoldiers, they’re not fly-by-night operations.”

“Just fly-under-the-radar ones.” Maria nodded. “Good work. I’ll look through it. You’re in town for the next few days, aren’t you?”

“Fury wants me to hand; I think there’s something brewing.”

It wasn’t quite a question, and Romanoff knew she wasn’t going to get an answer, but it went against her nature _not_ to fish. Maria just said, “I’ll contact you if I have clarification questions.”

Natasha stretched out in the chair, smiling, “Did you know Rogers finally contacted Stark about the apartment in the tower?”

“I didn’t realise I was supposed to care.”

“Well, he brings you coffee and takes you to dinner, and—” Natasha smirked as Maria eyed her. “Fury needs to assign you Level Ones who aren’t terrified of me interrogating them.”

Interrogation? Of a Level One? By the Black Widow? That would usually constitute the lifting of a single eyebrow and waiting for them to spill their guts. “You bribed her.”

“With hand-to-hand lessons.” Natasha’s smile oozed smug unrepentance.

Maria snorted. She wasn’t great with people, but she _was_ pretty good at taking their measure, and Agent Haddock was made of stern stuff for her age. “You do realise that Fury would have authorised it first?”

Natasha paused, struck by Maria’s comment. Then her shoulders slumped a little. “That takes all the fun out.”

“I know.”

“Except for the part where you’re having dinner with Steve Rogers.” Natasha shifted, crossing her legs, and her pose softened, becoming subtly languorous as she smiled. “You know the psych reports said that he’s experiencing a social disconnect, and that to get him fully into the 21st Century, he’s going to need a personal connection. He needs to make friends, develop...intimacy.” She lingered on the last word.

“He has STRIKE. And you.”

“STRIKE? Please. They’re about as warm and welcoming as a room full of guns. Which is what they are, after all. And I’m not the intimate type – at least, not in any way that Rogers would enjoy.”

Maria blocked out the thought of intimacy with Steve Rogers. “And I am?”

“You could be.”

“I’m not interested.”

Natasha studied her for a long moment, before she shrugged. “If you say so. I was thinking of trying to hook him up with someone.”

Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, and unprofessional matchmaker. God help them all. Maria sighed. “Go right ahead, just don’t involve me.”

“I thought it was fair to ask first. Seeing as you had dinner with him the other week.”

“I was ambushed.” _Hill, there’s nothing ‘just’ about you._ “And it was just dinner.” Maria continued before Natasha could say anything about that. “You’ve had dinner with him before.”

“Yes, but _I_ know I’m not interested.” Natasha’s smile was demure. “Now that I know _you’re_ not...”

If she was fishing, she was going to come up empty. Maria made herself sigh gustily, like she’d had more than enough of this conversation. “Go find Rogers a date on your own time, Romanoff. I’ve got intel to look over.”

The salute Natasha tipped her was distinctly jaunty before the woman sauntered out the door.

Maria exhaled as she started scrolling through the files Natasha had given her, trying to work out the naming conventions and what was going where. And trying not to think about Natasha hooking Rogers up. It was none of her business, and she wasn’t about to make it any of her business – however much a treacherous little part of her might want to.

She turned her mind to the data that Natasha had found her, and started opening files. Cross-referencing them with Skye’s data was a little more helpful, although not much. Most of what Skye had was about the treatments themselves, the work that had been done on the patients, while Natasha had more about the actual companies working on them.

U-Gin. Bariolos Santigua. Rohygia Medical again.

A quick search on S.H.I.E.L.D’s data on Rohygia Medical showed that there were a couple of orange flags previously up for them, but until she’d identified their logo at Vilnius, no red. They had offices in Lithuania, Switzerland, Poland, and Austria according to the database—

Most of Natasha’s data were notes – reports on who’d said this or who’d said that. Some were transcripts, scribed from videos and, in one case, memory, a couple were voice recorded interviews. One was video – the quality was old-school – perhaps as old as Russo’s videocamera.

The man looked nervous as he gabbled in fluid Italian for which Maria needed no translation.

“ _Look, they’re organised, I know that much. Crime? Perhaps. I didn’t ask, and once I found out the connections, I refused – very politely, of course. Everyone has their limits, and human experimentation was mine._ ”

“ _What kind of human experimentation?_ ”

The man snorted. “ _What other kind is there? They search for the ultimate soldier – the Steve Rogers that will answer all their dreams of hypermasculine superiority. But the time of the soldier, of the greatest weapon to fight and defeat all other weapons – that is done. The corporations that control the west would not risk their interests on one man’s whim – or on the march of armies of such. They have seen what that betokens – in the Middle East, in the Muslim Extremists. They want none of that._ ”

“ _So what do they want?_ ”

“ _Control,_ ” said the man quietly. “ _The rudder that will steer the ship of a thousand souls – whether to run it aground on their shores, or guide it safely through. And I...I recognised...a little of what they were doing. We saw it in New York – when the portal closed, the Chitauri fell where they stood. They were individuals, but only so far. The many acted individually, but they were controllable as one. And who do you think was buying the Chitauri corpses? Not just the collectors, but those who wanted alien flesh, alien DNA._ ”

Maria tagged the man’s profile and went back through the company which had offered him a job – a division of Oyaji Biotech with production lines in Japan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Paraguay, and Switzerland—

_I’ve seen that address,_ she thought, and flipped back to Rohygia Medical.

It wasn’t a street address, so to speak – just a location on a road, but the road—

_I’ve seen that road before, too – somewhere else._

She checked where the road led – up to the middle of nowhere in the Swiss Alps— Maria paused as the system flashed up a notice to her. _Location is within one mile of a known terrorist base – indicate possible location synchronicity?_

A terrorist base? In the Swiss Alps? Maria clicked ‘yes’ and watched the text box come up with the scarlet lettering and the small round symbol.

Ten seconds later, she opened a line with Fury. “Sir? We’ve got a definite problem with the supersoldiers.”

* * *

“You know, I still can’t believe that Fury let you off the leash,” said Akela as the European Operations squadron crossed the tarmac to the waiting Quinjet. “And without Cap, too.”

“Bribery, corruption, and a hall pass from Doc Russo. And Rogers is not my keeper.”

Akela snorted. “But I bet he’d like to be.”

“You’re as bad as Romanoff.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” came the mutter as the Op squad came up the ramp, their leader stepping aside to address her – a broad, burly black guy with muscles like a Renaissance carving.

“Hill. I hear you’ve got trouble for us.”

“You could say that.” She’d sent him the mission profile as soon as Fury had okayed it – two hours after she first pulled it up on his desktop interface. “Let’s get moving and I’ll brief your men on the way.”

“Works for me. Agent Amador. Good to see you again.”

“Lahovary.” Akela’s voice was perfectly even and perfectly cool. “Wish I could say the same.”

“Ouch.” But the grin was evident in Lahovary’s voice.

Maria gave pilot the co-ordinates, confirmed Bhavi's query when the location synchronicity notation came up, and then went out back to the hold as the Quinjet lifted off.

“The mission should be released to your Operations accounts now,” she told them. “It’s a search-and-recon of a facility in the mountains that we believe was previously used as a base of operations for the creation and development of supersoldiers. It was also once the base of operations for the Red Skull.”

Someone whistled. “Are the two connected?”

“Not so far as we know.”

“How previously is ‘previously used’?” Lahovary inquired.

“So far as we can tell, six months. There’s been no movement around the base in that time – not that satellite passes have indicated, and there are no records of deliveries or services up here. The facility had it’s own generator during the Red Skull’s occupation, and its independence continued after the war while it was used, initially as an SSR centre of operations, and later as the labs of assorted companies associated with genetic engineering, biochemistry, and medical research.”

One of the guys looked up – Bosey Melkin. “You said a base of operations? They actually worked out how to make supersoldiers?”

“Without the side effects of villany, paranoia, or turning into a giant rage machine?” Xander Fallon arched a brow, long and lean and sardonic. “Like, multiple Steve Rogers?”

“The detailed reports are in the folder,” Maria told them, refusing to linger on the thought of multiple Steve Rogers. “You’ve already been given the video from Vilnius.”

“With your additions,” Lahovary eyed her. “Was that classified?”

“Declassified for this op,” she told them. “But I only encountered one in close quarters.”

“And we might be facing an army of them? Good to know.”

Fallon snorted. “You went close quarters with one of the guys we saw in the hiker’s vid, Hill? And came out alive? You should’ve been Ops.”

Maria bared her teeth. “I literally don’t have the balls, Fallon.”

“Yeah, but you got them metaphorically. All that’s needed.”

“Quit sucking up to the DD, Xan.” Lahovary eyed the ceiling of the Quinjet. “Does this one have the holoprojector? I want a look at the layout of the place.”

She pulled up a 3D blueprint. “This is the SRS’s last records of the Red Skull’s base. We haven’t had anyone inside there since the mid 80s, and some of the details may have significantly changed.”

“Some of the larger ones, too,” said one of the guys – Costas Pelosi. “You can subdivide a large room—”

“We’re sure that the base isn’t manned?”

“Are we looking for anything in particular?”

“If it’s abandoned, why?”

“Depends,” said Fallon. “Are we in a horror movie, or an action movie?”

The squad jeered at him, but over the next ten minutes, Maria watched the men put together the insertion plan, with Lahovary guiding them as needed. She’d asked for a team that could put something together on the fly, and it was good to see she’d got it.

Lahovary came around to stand by Maria while his guys were arguing about close quarter armory for the insertion. “When I got assigned this, I got called in for a meeting with Thorpe and found Fury already on conference.” Dark eyes glanced sideways at her. “I nearly backed out.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I figure I owe you for Algeria in 2011.”

“You do.” Maria glanced over at a burst of laughter from the guys. Akela was shooting Fallon down – metaphorically – as the big guy tried to flirt with her. Lahovary’s eyes narrowed. “I see you’re still carrying a torch.”

“Shut up.” The Ops leader glanced at her. “What’s Trip my brother doing these days? You seen him lately?”

“Last call, he was paired up with Garrett. Ever met John Garrett?”

“Once. He spun a lot of shit.”

“Accurate, if blunt.” The sound of the engines shifted – from hard flight to slower maneuvring. “Sounds like we’re coming up. Get your guys geared.”

In the cockpit, the pilot was studying the readouts. “Storm cell coming over the mountains, ETA 3 hours. Once in, we might be dug in.”

“We’ll take the risk.” Maria eyed the projection of the tarmac and the hangar door. They had an entry key – a very old one, back from the days of the SSR. If it didn’t work, they’d be going in through the facility vents, and that would be a lot more complicated, even if Lahovary and his squad were rated for mountain climbing – one more reason Maria had requested them. “How’s the ice?”

“Not great, not terrible. We’ll have to grapple once we’re in, but we’re fully equipped.” He lifted his voice. “Better strap in. Going in might get a bit rough.”

Maria belted herself into the co-pilot’s chair, watching the altimeter drop and drop and drop as they came in over the mountain range. And tried not to think about the last break-and-entry into this place. Rogers and the Howling Commandos coming in to break the back of HYDRA, the fight against the Red Skull, and the flight of the Valkyrie down into the ice for seventy years.

She tried not to think of Peggy kissing Rogers goodbye.

That hadn’t made it into any of the reports. Maria had learned of it during her visit to Peggy just after they’d discovered Rogers in the ice.

“ _I kissed him, you know. Unprofessional. Highly unprofessional. I was thinking that as we watched him fly off. But afterwards..._ ” Peggy’s lashes flicked up to look at Maria. “ _Afterwards, I was glad. It was something he could to take with him into the darkness._ ”

_Warm, firm lips opening to hers; the angle of his head as he leaned in; the sharp awareness of the sheer physicality of him, drowning out thought._

She put it out of mind, ignored the heaviness in her stomach and the weight on her chest, and focused on the mission. Check out the facility, determine what it had been used for, work out what to do with it – if anything.

“Amador,” she said as they skimmed trees and rocks like a surfer skims a wave. “How’re our signals?”

“All quiet,” came Akela’s answer over comms a moment later. “I’m not getting any comms chatter, and nothing out of their transmission lines.”

“So if they’re there, they’re sitting quiet.” Maria felt a surge of something like dread as he looked at the mountain. She took a deep breath and told Bhavi, “As quietly as we can manage.”

“On it.”

The ride got a little rocky as they came in over the valley behind the base. The runway was short but that didn’t matter to the Quinjet, not the way it would to a plane—

A gust of wind tossed them sideways, but Bhavi controlled it with rock-steady hands and a small burst of power. They landed and the engines held steady as the Quinjet shot out grapples. A rocky moment, then the lines pulled taut.

Maria undid her seatbelt as Bhavi powered down. In the cargo hold, Lahovary’s men were unclipping themselves and finishing off their gear prep. Maria fastened on a flak jacket, and checked her pockets as Akela checked her feeds again.

“Still nothing,” she said, taking the flak jacket Maria passed her. “Not even a wireless signal. I’ll splice in once we’re inside.”

“So they’re sitting _real_ quiet,” Lahovary murmured.

“It’s a trap!” Xanders said in a hoarse mock-whisper as the guys chuckled.

“It might be,” Maria said, seriously. “But it’s not exactly easy to hide an army of supersoldiers – even up here, where things are pretty quiet.”

“And if they _have_ hidden an army of supersoldiers up here? Frozen in the ice, waiting to rise and wreak havoc on the world?”

_…cold slab, cold metal, always and ever cold, and the only warmth was when they took him out. He clung to the warmth, something in him reaching for what he didn’t remember..._

“Then we run like hell and hope they don’t catch us.”

The ramp lowered down onto the icy ground and Maria checked her tac vest pockets and her weapon before taking the remote from the locker in which she’d stored it and striding down the ramp to the tarmac. The instant she left the shelter of the Quinjet, the wind hit her full force. It was hard enough to push her sideways as she fumbled with the remote control and hoped the signal still worked. Climbing around to the air vent would be a nightmare in this wind.

There were a few seconds in which she held her breath, then, with an audible ‘pop’, a door outline showed itself in the rock face by the hangar door.

Maria made her way over to it, trusting that the others were coming behind her, trusting her instincts that said the place was empty, that there was no-one waiting for them inside, no cameras watching them.

_They’re gone,_ whispered the wind as it spun around her before swirling off into the still, stale air of what had once been a giant hangar.

Maria shivered slightly as Akela, Lahovary, and his men filed in the door behind her. The main hangar floor was mostly empty, a tall, cavernous space, but along the walls were shipping pallets, multiple levels of them, piled high with industrial plastic crates.

“Seems like a pretty inconvenient warehouse right up here in the middle of nowhere,” Lahovary murmured.

“I guess that depends,” Maria said, noting the familiar stamps on many of the crates. “Are you storing it for use, or hiding it from someone?”

“I’m in,” Akela reported, her voice echoing in the space. “And there’s nothing. The power’s at bare minimum. One generator – basic, no wireless signal; I’m splicing in to their network now...”

The network lines in the hangar were dead, too. Nothing coming or going, nothing to give any sign that there was anyone in the base.

“We’ll work our way through the base. Two groups, north and south.” Maria went over to Akela, held her hand out for the tablet. “You’re comms, and I want you to find out who last delivered to this base – work your way through the companies whose crates are here, and cross-check with the companies in the files I’m passing to you.”

“It would have helped to have this before,” Akela noted as she took back the tablet and eyed the files. “You _have_ been busy.”

Lahovary had split his men into two; they were ribbing each other about some obscure in-joke, but they settled when Maria came over.

“We’re checking this place from top to bottom – break in where the doors are locked. Every storeroom, every restroom. Keep in contact, report on anything you find, no matter how mundane – just because the facility is cold doesn’t mean it’s abandoned. And remember: every supersoldier project that was ever initiated started out creating monsters – and we’re standing in the base of the first.”

They moved out briskly, with Maria falling into the middle of the group, her weapon out, but letting Xander and Fallon take lead. Her mouth was dry, and her stomach unsettled, but she kept her voice even as she looked at the group. “Let’s move.”

They headed off to a door to the right of the hangar entrance, bootsteps echoing in the chill air, breath misting before their eyes. Dark corridors led to empty rooms. Control rooms to begin with, rooms that still smelled of the oil spilled across their floors in dark stains, large storerooms, then smaller ones. Restrooms and break rooms and smaller storerooms. Rooms large enough for people to meet in, kitchens and locker rooms and laboratories and bunks...

And with every step Maria took, she felt the dread in her grow, seeping across her skin like the shadows of the facility, broken only by the lights on their headsets. There was something—had been something—was _still_ something—

She saw a shadow in the corner of her eye, and turned, her weapon coming up to point at empty air and a dead end corridor ending in a heavy sliding door – the kind that sealed a refrigerator space closed.

But there’d been a moment when she’d have sworn she saw the Terminator guy.

Lahovary’s team had brought their weapons up, fallen silent at her movement. Xander took one step down the corridor, then glanced at her for a cue.

_What is it?_ He mouthed.

Maria shook her head, not sure. But dread was a goad in her belly, and her feet moved without conscious thought – down to the end of the corridor, where a sliding door was locked with keypad security. More security than they’d encountered anywhere else in this place.

More secrets than they knew.

They keypad was well-worn. Her fingers traced the numbers _5-1-7-5-8-3-3-4_...

She pushed the door open, already knowing what was inside but needing to see—

The cold air was faintly rancid, foetid with the reek of decay. Beside her, Xander dry-retched and someone further up the corridor gagged.

Disgust was beyond Maria at that moment; what filled her was an awful, wrenching grief.

“Oh. Fuck.” Lahovary murmured as he came up behind her and the light of his headset shone over the grisly scene.

Bodies lay askew, limbs outflung, heads lolling at unnatural angles. More than one chest cavity gaped, a bloodied Y-cut remaining unsewn. Most had frozen where they’d been dumped, so much detritus in the search for ultimate human perfection.

Maria stepped into the freezer room, trying to get a better look – and glimpsed a limb that was very much not human. Maybe Banner should count himself lucky that the Hulk at least had a human form, even if he did lose his temper and occasionally trash Harlem.

The rest of the squad was looking in on the carnage, their exclamations of hushed disbelief and nausea. In the background, one of the guys was reporting back to Akela and Bhavi, another was contacting the other team in the mountain.

And Maria looked into the empty eyes of the nearest corpse – a man of Middle Eastern descent whose skin had been flayed from his flesh – and shuddered.

“What the hell happened here?” Xander asked, nudging one body with his booted toe, as though trying to wake the guy from his icy sleep.

The words were dredged from her dreams, from the people whose hands reached out to her in her sleep, looking for something she didn’t have in her to give. “These were the failures.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Lahovary, “We’re gonna need a clean-up team and a half for this— And labs are gonna have a field day.”

Her comms buzzed. “Hill,” Akela said briskly. “You’ve got a Priority 1, encrypted, I’m relaying it through—”

Only one person would call right now, like this— “This is Hill.”

“I need you back in DC now. Deep cover.”

Maria blinked, did the math in her head. “I can be there in four hours.”

“You have three.”

Of course she did. He didn’t wait for her answer, terminating the call. And Maria immediately opened the channel to the entire squad. “All units, you have fifteen minutes to get back to the Quinjet. I have a Priority 1, so we’re on the way out.”

As they backed out of the refrigerated storage, Lahovary waited for Maria to get out and helped her shove the door closed behind them. “Fury?”

“Who else?” She followed the rest of the search squad who was making brisk haste out of the mountain – they were veterans of wars and missions, familiar with death. But what they’d seen there had freaked them out. “I know no more than you, so don’t ask.”

They made their way up through the levels to the hangar and out onto the runway, where the Quinjet’s engines were already warming.

“Commander, do we have a destination?” Bhavi asked over the comms.

“DC,” she said. “Fury wants me there in three hours, so it’s balls to the walls.”

There was a startled silence. “Okay. Are we dropping Lahovary off?”

“What’s on our way?”

“Cordoba.”

“Then that’s where they’re going to end—” The world _blurred_ , snow-covered peaks giving way to the grey and brown of a DC street and the overturned vehicle in the middle of it—S.H.I.E.L.D standard issue, but it had taken a helluva beating. Bulletmarks dented its sides and spidered its windows, the wheels had been blown out, and the numberplate—

Just as abruptly she was at the base of the ramp to the Quinjet, about to step up on the ramp. She paused, momentarily disoriented, and Lahovary caught her arm. “Hill?”

“Fine.” She shook herself free and strode up the ramp, Lahovary coming in after her as the ramp closed and the Quinjet began to lift. The instant she was back in the co-pilot’s seat, she called Fury back – and got the cool pre-recorded message. “ _The line you have called is unavailable or disconnected. Please try again later._ ”

“Hill?” Bhavi was looking at her with an inquiry in his eyes. “Cordoba?”

“Yes. Push it.” She fought back a shiver – the feeling of the tsunami about to crash, changing everything she knew.

**tbc**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is as far as I've gotten with this story. There will hopefully be more within a couple of months, however health issues have taken me hostage, and I'm working my way around them right now.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, kudosing, and commenting - your enthusiasm, dedication, and encouragement is so very appreciated.


End file.
